The subject of this drawing is the Via Tecta, a gallery or tunnel built beneath the ruins of the Santuario di Ercole Vincitore (Sanctuary of Hercules Victor) in Tivoli. Formerly known as the Villa of Maecenas, the Santuario is in fact a large temple complex dating from the first century BC, dedicated to the cult of Hercules. The Via Tecta carried the ancient Roman road, the Via Tiburtina, beneath the substructures of the Santuario and was originally used for herding and selling livestock.
1 Part of it is still extant, although the surviving remnants of the temple have been much altered by industrial use of the site between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
2 Turner’s view looks along the passageway towards the daylight at the end. Visible within the vaults of the ceiling are two square-shaped openings, designed to let in light and air, whilst along the left-hand side of the wall are arched lateral spaces which were formerly shops flanking the road.
3 Visual precedents for the subject include etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) for the
Veduta di Roma,
4 and a watercolour by Louis Ducros (1748–1810),
The Stables of the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli (Stourhead, The Hoare Collection, The National Trust).
5 Turner could have seen views by both artists in the collection of his early patron, Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead.