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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Tivoli Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of the Montes Corniculani, from the So-Called Tempio della Tosse, Tivoli 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of the Montes Corniculani, from the So-Called Tempio della Tosse, Tivoli’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Recto:
Distant View of the Montes Corniculani, from the So-Called Tempio della Tosse, Tivoli 1819
D15519
Turner Bequest CLXXXIII 48
Pencil and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 200 x 253 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in faded red ink ‘48’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge, and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘48’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIII 48’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing depicts the landscape to the north of Tivoli with a distant view of the three conical hills known as the Montes Corniculani (Horned Mountains), crowned by the villages of Montecelio and Sant’Angelo Romano.1 A related sketch can be seen in the Tivoli and Rome sketchbook (Tate D15102; Turner Bequest CLXXIX 91a) and the hills also appear in the far distance of a drawing in the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16119; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 31). The small domed structure visible amidst the trees on the edge of the slope in the foreground appears to represent the so-called Tempio della Tosse (Temple of the Cough), an ancient ruin believed to be the vestibule of a Roman villa. Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background.
1
See Thomas Ashby, ‘Turner at Tivoli’, Burlington Magazine, vol.25, no.136, July 1914, p.242.
Verso:
Blank, except for traces of grey watercolour wash

Nicola Moorby
February 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Distant View of the Montes Corniculani, from the So-Called Tempio della Tosse, Tivoli 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-distant-view-of-the-montes-corniculani-from-the-so-called-r1137795, accessed 04 April 2026.