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

The upper half of this page has been torn out, presumably by Turner. Orienting the sketchbook vertically, he used the remnant of the torn-out page for two slight views annotated ‘Lorretto’, a misspelling of Loreto. Located south of Ancona near the Adriatic coast, the town is famed for its hilltop basilica, the Sanctuary of Santa Casa, which overlooks the town of Loreto. Built during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the sponsorship of Pope Paul II, it houses the relic of the Holy House of Nazareth, making it an important site of Catholic pilgrimage.1 Whereas the upper study offers a slight profile from further away, the lower study gives a clearer indication of the building’s Renaissance dome and the eighteenth-century Vanvitellian belltower, visible for miles around. Both views were captured from the north, likely along the road to Ancona as Turner looked back on his route.

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), using the same erroneous spelling.2 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 the present sketchbook, see folios 21 recto, 32 verso and 33 recto (D14869, D14888–D14889). Turner also sketched Loreto extensively during his first major tour of Italy in 1819–20; 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).

The recto is blank, except for ‘41’ in red ink and ‘CLXXVIII – 41’ stamped in black, both towards bottom right of the original portion. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory omitted the customary ‘a’ suffix to the folio number to indicate that the present work is the verso, and when Tate accession numbers were allocated, the recto was initially numbered D14903, with this page as D14904; the latter number was subsequently cancelled in favour of the former.

Technical notes:

The remnant of the torn-out page is uneven, extending to a maximum height of 77 mm. It has been made good with modern laid paper, increasing the height to 132 mm to match the sketchbook’s intact leaves.