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 Bastione San Paolo on the Heights East of Ancona Cathedral 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Bastione San Paolo on the Heights East of Ancona Cathedral’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
The Bastione San Paolo on the Heights East of Ancona Cathedral 1819
D14644
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 80a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell queried Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry ‘Ancona’ with a question mark, and crossed out Finberg’s curly bracket (usually an indication of a continuous view) linking this page with folio 85 recto opposite (D14645; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 81);1 the two drawings are indeed separate, albeit showing different aspects of Ancona from similar viewpoints.
On the skyline to the left of centre are the massive ramparts of the Bastione San Paolo. Now somewhat dilapidated and overgrown, it stands near the sea cliffs south-east of the Cathedral and Victorian lighthouse in the area forming the Parco del Cardeto, with Monte Cardeto beyond the Campo degli Ebrei to the right. The recto (D14644) shows a similar view from nearer the fortifications.
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 James Hamilton, Turner: A Life, London 1997, p.198.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Bastione San Paolo on the Heights East of Ancona Cathedral 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-bastione-san-paolo-on-the-heights-east-of-ancona-r1186380, accessed 05 April 2026.