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

Having departed from Rome, Turner journeyed north-east during the first week of January 1829, crossing the Apennine Mountains in Umbria and reaching the Marche region on the east coast. Among the hilltop towns he sketched as he approached Ancona were Macerata, Recanati, Loreto and Osimo.

Dominating this page is a detailed sketch of the hilltop Sanctuary of Santa Casa, also known simply as the Loreto. This hilltop basilica overlooks the town of the same name. It was built during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the sponsorship of Pope Paul II, and houses the relic of the Holy House of Nazareth, making it an important site of Catholic pilgrimage.1

As noted by Cecilia Powell, Turner’s vantage point is from the road to Ancona to the north of the town, looking southwards towards the Sanctuary.2 In view is the octagonal Renaissance dome, completed under the architect Giuliano da Sangallo. To the right is the Vanvitellian belltower, constructed in the eighteenth century. Also visible are the northern and eastern exterior walls of the Renaissance square surrounding the basilica, the Piazza della Madonna. This vista appears to extend onto folio 33 recto opposite (D14889).

Shortly after returning to London in February 1829, Turner set to work on an oil painting depicting the Sanctuary of Santa Casa in Loreto, The Loretto Necklace (Tate N00509), the erroneous spelling his own.3 With the hilltop basilica in the distance, seen from the north, the composition bears similarities to the present sketch, albeit with the addition of a large tree in the foreground. The necklace of the title was thought to refer to the rosary and the cult of the Madonna at Loreto. The finished picture was prepared for the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition that year, which opened in early May, Turner having accurately predicted that the paintings he completed in Rome would not be shipped to London in time.

For further studies of Loreto in this sketchbook, see folios 21 recto, 33 recto and 41 verso (D14869, D14889, D14903). Turner also sketched Loreto extensively during his first major tour of Italy in 1819; see Nicola Moorby’s entries in the present catalogue for the Ancona to Rome sketchbook (Tate D14653–D14655, D14657, D14662, D14664, D14670–D14680, D14685, D14708; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 1–3, 5a, 6a, 9a–14a, 17, 29).