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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of Rome from Villa Madama on Monte Mario 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Recto:
View of Rome from Villa Madama on Monte Mario 1819
D16388
Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 57
Pencil and traces of watercolour and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 229 x 368 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIX 57’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Some of the most famous panoramas of Rome could be seen from the heights of Monte Mario, a hill to the north of the city. This rough sketch depicts a sweeping view of approximately ninety degrees looking south-east from the Villa Madama, a sixteenth-century estate built for the Medici family on the eastern slopes of the hill. It is extremely close in composition to a watercolour by John Robert Cozens, Villa Madama, Rome 1791 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester).1 A more detailed version of the subject can be found on another sheet now detached from the sketchbook, see folio 48 (D16377). See this entry for a more detailed discussion of Turner’s depictions of the Villa Madama and Monte Mario.
Like many pages within this book, the drawing has been executed over a washed grey background and Turner has created areas of pale highlights by rubbing through to the white paper beneath.
1
Reproduced in colour in Anna Ottani Cavina, Un Paese Incantato: Italia Dipinta da Thomas Jones a Corot, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Parigi and Palazzo Te, Mantova, Italy 2001, p.42, no.26.
Verso:
Blank except for traces of grey watercolour wash; inscribed by an unknown hand(s) in pencil ‘clxxxix 57’ and ‘nr Tivoli?’ bottom right and ‘57?’ bottom left, ascending left-hand edge.

Nicola Moorby
July 2009

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Rome from Villa Madama on Monte Mario 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2009, 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-view-of-rome-from-villa-madama-on-monte-mario-r1132445, accessed 29 March 2024.