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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Church and Bridge of San Giacomo, Foligno, from across the River Topino 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Church and Bridge of San Giacomo, Foligno, from across the River Topino’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
The Church and Bridge of San Giacomo, Foligno, from across the River Topino 1819
D14717
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 33 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s passage through the Apennines took him out the Marche region of Italy and into Umbria where the first significant stop of note en routeto Rome was Foligno, a town extending across a large plain to the west of the mountains. Eustace described it in A Classical Tour Through Italy as ‘large ... yet a very indifferent town’,1 but despite his ambivalence, Turner found Foligno provided some interesting subjects for sketching. Cecilia Powell has identified this view as the Church of San Giacomo from across the River Topino. In the foreground are the arches and tower of the Ponte San Giacomo (demolished in 1837). The site of present-day Porta Firenze, the bridge represented the main entrance to Foligno from the north.
Other sketches of Foligno can be found on folios 34 (D14718), 34 verso (D14719) and 35 verso (D14721), as well as in the Route to Rome sketchbook (Tate D13891 and D13896; Turner Bequest CLXXI 18 and 20 verso).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, vol.I, p.318.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Church and Bridge of San Giacomo, Foligno, from across the River Topino 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2008, 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-the-church-and-bridge-of-san-giacomo-foligno-from-across-the-r1138880, accessed 19 April 2024.