Turner sketched this distant view of Tivoli from a point on the present-day Via Quintilio Varo, on the lower slopes of Monte Catillo, north-east of the town. In the centre of the composition is the silhouette of the so-called Temple of Vesta, perched on the edge of the steep gorge. The hasty character of the lines and the areas of hatched shading suggest that the artist was sketching at the end of the day when the light was failing and parts of the landscape were cast into deep shadow. Furthermore he has noted the ‘orange’ colour of the sky in the west and the fact that the setting sun remains brightest over ‘R[ome]’ in the far distance. The sketch is continued on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 40 verso (
D15001). Turner made several sketches from this viewpoint, see folios 40–42 verso and 87 verso (
D15000–D15005 and
D15092), the
Tivoli sketchbook (Tate
D15468,
D15488,
D15500–D15502; Turner Bequest CLXXXIII 2, 22, 33–5), and in the
Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate
D16116 and
D16118; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 28 and 30). He also repeated the vista during his 1828 visit to Tivoli, see the
Roman and French sketchbook (Tate
D21912; Turner Bequest CCXXXVII 35a). The composition is similar to that of an early oil painting,
Tivoli and the Roman Campagna circa 1798 (Tate,
N05512),
1 which was itself based upon a version of a picture by the eighteenth-century Welsh artist, Richard Wilson (1713–1782), for example,
Temple of the Sibyl and the Roman Campagna circa 1765–70 (Tate,
T01706).