J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The subject of this sketch is the Forte Sangallo, a Renaissance fortress which stands at the western tip of Civita Castellana, a town in the Viterbo province of Lazio, approximately seventeen miles south of Narni and thirty miles north of Rome. Named after its architect, Antonio da Sangallo the Elder (circa 1453–1534), this sandstone and brick building comprises an octagonal tower or citadel within a pentagonal bastion. It was also known as the Rocca dei Borgia, after Rodrigo Borgia, the future Pope Alexander VI, who commissioned the conversion of the existing castle into the imposing fortress, and during the nineteenth century, the building was used as a prison, earning it the name of the ‘Bastille of the Popes’. Turner’s sketch depicts the fortress from the south-west, on the road leaving Civita Castellana towards Nepi. To the right is the dome and lantern of the cathedral. The position of the drawing within the sketchbook disrupts the sequence of views of Narni and was clearly executed on a spare blank page at a later date. Other sketches of Civita Castellana can be found on folios 75 verso–79 verso(D14800–D14808).

The remainder of the page contains part of a horizontal landscape sketch, the continuation of the view from the opposite side of the double-page spread, see folio 69 (D14787).