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 > Gandolfo to Naples Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of the Castle at Fondi; and a Distant View of ?Itri 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of the Castle at Fondi; and a Distant View of ?Itri’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
Two Sketches of the Castle at Fondi; and a Distant View of ?Itri 1819
D15602
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 23 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Fondi’ centre right, near right-hand edge, and ‘[?Gaspar]’ within left-hand sketch, parallel with left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
After Terracina, Turner’s journey to Naples took him south on the Via Appia to Fondi. This page contains two studies of the castle (Castello Baronale) of Fondi, a distinctive medieval fortress with cylindrical towers, the tallest of which stands at the front of the rectangular structure.1 Turner has drawn the building from two different angles, the uppermost of which is similar to his thumbnail pen-and-ink copy of a view after John ‘Warwick’ Smith (1749–1831) in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (Tate D13968; Turner Bequest CLXXII 20). The gateway adjacent to the castle was destroyed by Allied bombing during the Second World War. Further sketches of the castle can also be seen on folio 22 verso (D15598; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 21a), as well as in the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate D15160; Turner Bequest CLXXX 28a) and the Naples, Paestum, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15954; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 23).
On the left-hand side of the sheet, parallel with the left-hand edge is a separate landscape sketch which may depict a distant view of Itri, a town approximately eight miles south-east of Fondi. For sketches of Itri see folio 25 verso (D15604; Turner Bequest 24a).

Nicola Moorby
April 2010

1
See for example photograph in Consociazione Turistica Italiana, Attraverso Italia Illustrazione delle Regioni Italiane: Lazio, vol.11, Milan 1943, p.190, fig.45. Also Susanna La Pera Buranelli and Rita Turchetti (eds.), Sulla Via Appia da Roma a Brindisi: le fotografie di Thomas Ashby 1891–1925, Rome 2003, no.85, p.141.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches of the Castle at Fondi; and a Distant View of ?Itri 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2010, 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-two-sketches-of-the-castle-at-fondi-and-a-distant-view-of-r1138064, accessed 09 June 2025.