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 > Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Santa Lucia, Naples, with the Fountain of Santa Lucia 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Lucia, Naples, with the Fountain of Santa Lucia’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
Santa Lucia, Naples, with the Fountain of Santa Lucia 1819
D16056
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 74 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this study is the Fontana di Santa Lucia in Naples.1 One of a number of monumental public fountains found within the city, it was built during the early seventeenth century and formerly stood on the quayside in the Santa Lucia district of Naples on present-day Via Cesario Console. In 1895 it was moved to its present position in the Villa Comunale (the park on the Chiaia waterfront formerly known as the Villa Reale). Turner’s sketch depicts the fountain with a view of Vesuvius in the background. The artist has delineated the decorative Baroque detail on one half of the structure, assuming that the remaining half represents a mirror image. Beneath the basin, a couple of street traders are selling their wares. For further sketches of the Santa Lucia waterfront see folios 75 verso–76 (D16054–D16055; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 73a–74) and the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15675, D15677–D15678; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 58c, 59a–60).
In the top right-hand corner is a separate landscape sketch, the details of which are too rough to be identified.

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
For example see Leone Gasparini, Antiche Fontane di Napoli, Naples 1979, p.74, reproduced fig.60.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Santa Lucia, Naples, with the Fountain of Santa Lucia 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-santa-lucia-naples-with-the-fountain-of-santa-lucia-r1137980, accessed 26 April 2024.