J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

As Turner’s written inscription indicates, the main sketch on this page depicts a view of Arezzo, a city approximately fifty miles south-east of Florence which the artist passed through on his return journey from Rome in the winter of 1819. The study looks down a sloping narrow street towards a square tower which Cecilia Powell first identified as the campanile of the Romanesque Church of Santa Maria della Pieve.1 Turner’s viewpoint is therefore near the northern perimeter of the city, looking south along present-day Via dei Pileati with the church in the central middle distance. For further views of Arezzo see folio 29 verso, 81, 88 verso (D16540, D16622 and D16634).

At the bottom of the page is part of a landscape composition continued from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 26 verso (D16534). The complete drawing depicts a view of the town of Castiglion Fiorentino, between Arezzo and Cortona, and visible on this side is the distant castle of Montecchio Vesponi, a fortress tower surrounded by walled battlements which occupies the summit of a hill a couple of miles to the south.