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

This sketch depicts a view of the north-west end of the Roman Forum. Turner’s viewpoint is a position just to the left of Temple of Romulus looking towards the Capitoline Hill. Rising above the trees in the background is the bell-tower of the Palazzo Senatorio, whilst on the right is the dome of Santi Luca e Martina. Dominating the right-hand side of the vista is the Church of San Lorenzo in Miranda, a seventeenth-century Baroque building which incorporates the classical portico of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina. This ruined Roman temple was first dedicated to Faustina, the wife of Emperor Antoninus Pius in the second century AD but was later converted into a church following the belief that St Lawrence had been condemned to death there. Just visible through the trees in the foreground is the Arch of Septimius Severus. Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background and Turner has created areas of pale highlights by lifting or rubbing through to the white paper beneath.

As Cecilia Powell has pointed out,1 the sketch relates to part of the finished oil painting, Forum Romanum, for Mr Soane’s Museum exhibited 1826 (Tate, N00504).2 As the title suggests, the work was originally intended for the gallery of Turner’s friend, the architect Sir John Soane (1753–1837), although the commission was never in fact accepted. The composition was based upon an amalgam of several sketches from Turner’s 1819 sojourn in Rome and this sketchbook page appears to have informed the depiction of the buildings visible in the background between the Arch of Titus and the Basilica of Constantine. A similar view can also be found in the Rome: C. Studies sketchbook (see Tate D16351; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 25).