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 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Porto di Ripetta, Rome, Looking Up-river 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Porto di Ripetta, Rome, Looking Up-river’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 83 Recto:
Porto di Ripetta, Rome, Looking Up-river 1819
D16307
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 82
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘82’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 82’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is the Porto di Ripetta, a busy harbour which stood on the eastern bank of the Tiber near the Palazzo Borghese and the Mausoleum of Augustus. The design of the harbour, built in 1703–7 by Alessandro Specchi, comprised a double bank of steps with a theatrical curvilinear structure. Turner’s view shows part of the steps with a boat pulled up alongside and looks up-river with the Tiber curving into the distance. The harbour was demolished in 1889–90 as part of the construction of the Tiber embankments, although the fountain which once overlooked the site can still be seen, in a small garden near the eastern end of the present-day Ponte Cavour.1 A further sketch of the port looking down-river can be found on folio 69 (D16280; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 68).

Nicola Moorby
January 2009

1
‘Steps Off the Beaten Path: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Rome and its Environs’: Images from the collection of Dee and Bruce Lundberg, on-line exhibition, American Academy in Rome, nos.34–6, http://www.aarome.org/LundbergExhibition4.html, accessed January 2009. See also Ettore Roesler Franz (1845–1907),Port de Ripetta vers le Levant, watercolour, 1888, from the series Roma Sparita (Museo di Roma), http://fr.museodiromaintrastevere.it, accessed January 2009.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Porto di Ripetta, Rome, Looking Up-river 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, 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-porto-di-ripetta-rome-looking-up-river-r1139819, accessed 21 May 2025.