This sketch depicts the Voie Sarde (Sardinian Way), an ancient Roman road which passed through a natural canyon, just east of the village of Les Échelles. The passage was renovated during the seventeenth century by Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy (1634–1675), and this view depicts a monument which commemorates the Duke’s involvement. To the left of the structure is an entrance to a cave. The route was made obsolete during the early nineteenth century when Napoleon ordered the construction of a tunnel through the mountains, thereby by-passing the steep terraces of the Voie Sarde, see folio 73 (
D14112). However, it remained of interest to tourists and travellers through the area.
As Turner’s sketch shows, the monument to Charles Emmanuel II comprises a decorative stone wall built into the rock face with a Latin inscription at the top. According to contemporary guide books the structure exhibited:
numerous marks of musket balls, received in a severe contest upon this spot between some French republicans and Savoyards, in the early part of the French revolution; but a paper sold by an old soldier, a
cantonnier [person employed to keep the road in order], who keeps a hovel, and sells
eau-de-vie at the end of the new gallery [Napoleonic tunnel], furnishes not only all of the inscription, which the balls of the revolutionists have made deficient, but a bombastic translation, in French, for the edification and amusement of travellers.
1 Turner himself made a copy of the Latin inscription dating from 1670, see folio 71 verso (
D14109) and a further related study can be found on folio 70 (
D14106).
