Joseph Mallord William Turner

As Cecilia Powell identified these two views of Florence were taken from Fiesole, a hill town to the north-east of the city celebrated for its panoramic vistas across the surrounding countryside. The top sketch depicts Florence in the far distance from Fiesole itself, whilst the lower drawing show the Duomo and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio from the banks of the River Mugnone on the outskirts between Florence and Fiesole. Turner has inscribed the lower scene ‘Cyp in all’, a reference to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91). The year before departing on his Italian tour, Turner had exhibited a painting at the Royal Academy, Dort, or Dordrecht, the Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed (Yale Center for British Art), which was a direct homage to the Cuyp’s Italianate landscape compositions and golden lighting.1 During his travels through Italy in 1819–20 he was reminded of the artist on at least two occasions, here in Florence, but also on the coast in the south of the country (see the Naples, Paestum, Rome sketchbook, Tate D15976; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 33).2

Further sketches from Fiesole can be found on folios 30 verso, 31, 74–78, 79, 79 verso (D16542, D16543, D16608–D16616, D16618, D16619). Powell has suggested that the dark figure in the foreground of the lower study on this page may also have influenced Turner’s later design for the watercolour vignette, Florence, for Rogers’s Italy (see Tate D27673; Turner Bequest CCLXXXV 156).3

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