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 > Tivoli to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View of the Vatican from Porta Angelica, Rome 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Vatican from Porta Angelica, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Recto:
View of the Vatican from Porta Angelica, Rome 1819
D14974
Turner Bequest CLXXIX 27
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘27’ bottom left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIX 27’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts a view of the Vatican with the Belvedere Palace on the right and the corridors containing the Vatican Museums leading to the Apostolic Palace on the left. Turner’s location is Porta Angelica, a gate in the ancient Leonine Walls, erected during the first century to protect St Peter’s and the Vatican Hill from the Saracens. The gate, which can be seen near the central foreground, was demolished during the early twentieth century to make way for the Piazza del Risorgimento and the new walls of the Vatican City State. Prior to this it formed a popular viewpoint for artists. The drawing is very close in composition, for example, to similar views by Giuseppe Vasi (1710–82),1 Christoffer Wilhlem Eckersberg (1783–1853),2 and a copy after another artist which Turner executed as a young man with Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) (see Tate D36570; Turner Bequest CCCLXXVI 11).

Nicola Moorby
January 2010

1
See Porta Angelica, reproduced http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi19.htm, accessed January 2010.
2
Porta Angelica e i Palazzi Vaticani 1814 (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), 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, no.193, p.315.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Vatican from Porta Angelica, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-view-of-the-vatican-from-porta-angelica-rome-r1137606, accessed 23 April 2024.