Joseph Mallord William Turner

One of the most famous landmarks in Naples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the old lighthouse which stood at the elbow of the former Mole (pier) facing the port and arsenale (naval shipyard) near Castel Nuovo.1 It appears in countless paintings from the period, often looking east out to sea, with Vesuvius and the Sorrentine peninsula in the background.2 This is the view represented here with the L-shaped jetty stretching from the quayside into the boat-filled harbour on the left, and the gently smoking crater of the volcano dominating the horizon beyond. For alternative studies of the lighthouse see folios 36, 67 and 70 verso (D15625, D15688 and D15673; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 35, 65 and 58a). Also on this sheet are three small thumbnail landscape sketches, of which the view in the bottom right-hand corner appears to depict the old port of Pozzuoli from the sea.

During the nineteenth-century survey of the Turner Bequest this page was erroneously numbered ‘58’ instead of ‘68’ (probably by John Ruskin), causing Finberg to list the page as missing.3