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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 1819
D14629
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 73
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Partial watermark ‘Allnutt | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...] | DACCO PO [...] | [... ?QR access]’ towards top right, on arch
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘73’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 73’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Triumphal arches at Ancona’), crossing out the curly bracket (usually an indication of a continuous view) linking this page with folio 76 verso opposite (D14628; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 72a); the two drawings are indeed separate, albeit showing different aspects of the same arch. Bell gave the present page a variant title: ‘Arch of Trajan from the East’.1
The viewpoint is the Banchina immediately south-east of the Arch of Trajan, looking west along the broad pier to the Arco Clementino, which has since lost its upper storey on this side, and the lighthouse, only the base of which survives, supporting a coastguard station. Today the monuments are somewhat marooned in a heavily developed area of the port, though the section of heavily articulated harbour wall between them and on this side of the Arch of Trajan remains; the tower between the arches has gone.
Turner’s careful drawing includes indications of the Latin inscription over the arch. The incised letters, originally inset with bronze, are unevenly weathered, and of the seven-line text he has only picked out part of the third, which begins ‘DACICO.PONT.MAX.’, and apparently attempted parts of the fifth (‘SENATVS.P.Q.R.QVOD.ACCESSVM’).
For Cecilia Powell and James Hamilton’s comments on Turner’s varied and extensive coverage of Ancona, which takes up most of the last quarter or so of this sketchbook, see under folio 69 verso (D14514; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 65a).2

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.519.
2
See Powell 1984, pp.92–3, 466 note 109, Powell 1987, pp.25, 202 note 45, and Hamilton 1997, pp.198, 325 note 13.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Arch of Trajan, Arco Clementino and Lighthouse along the Pier at Ancona 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-arch-of-trajan-arco-clementino-and-lighthouse-along-the-r1186365, accessed 26 October 2025.