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

The main sketch on this page shows the unusual ruins of the medieval Casa dei Crescenzi, a former tower fortress converted into a mansion during the eleventh century by the powerful Crescenzi family using fragments of Roman remains. The house, which stands near the Ponte Rotto on the present-day Via Luigi Petroselli, is also known as the Cola di Rienzo, or the Casa di Pilato (House of Pilate). This last name refers to the tradition of performing Passion plays within the city from the fifteenth century onwards. Certain streets were thought to resemble the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and the Casa dei Crescenzi became the stand in for the House of Pontius Pilate where the scenes of Christ’s flagellation, the crown of thorns and the Ecce Homo took place.1

In the top right-hand corner of the page (or top left in portrait format) is a small sketch of the Porta Asinaria (Gate of the Donkeys), a Roman gate flanked by two half oval towers found within the southern stretch of the Aurelian Walls near the Porta San Giovanni and the Cathedral Church of San Giovanni in Laterano. For a related sketch see folio 38 (D15366).