The southernmost destination on Turner’s tour of Italy in 1819–20 was Paestum, an ancient city on the Tyrrhenian coast, approximately twenty miles south-east of Salerno. Here, like many British tourists, the artist visited the three famous fifth-century BC Greek Doric temples which stand on a plain between the mountains and the sea. Rediscovered in the mid-eighteenth century, the remains represented some of the most well preserved and complete temples in Europe, and according to Revd John Chetwode Eustace in
A Classical Tour Through Italy (first published 1813), surpassed those in every other Italian city except Rome.
1 Turner was already familiar with the appearance of the ruins through the work of other artists including Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778),
2 John Robert Cozens (1752–1797),
3 John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1831),
4 and James Hakewill (1778–1843).
5 Furthermore he had used an illustrated diagram featuring the so-called Temple of Neptune in his perspective lectures at the Royal Academy (see Tate
D17072; Turner Bequest CXCV 102). Having made the journey from Naples to Paestum for himself he eagerly seized the opportunity to make a number of on-the-spot sketches, exploring the site from a variety of angles, see folios 20, 31–33 verso, 44 verso–45 verso (
D15946,
D15968–D15973,
D15995–D15997; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 19b, 29–31a, 42a–43a).