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 > Small Roman Colour Studies Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Costanza and the Basilica Constantiniana, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Costanza and the Basilica Constantiniana, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 61 Verso:
Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Costanza and the Basilica Constantiniana, Rome 1819
D16430
Turner Bequest CXC 24 a
Pencil and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 130 x 255 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject of this sketch is the Church of Sant’Agnese fuori le mura which stands on the Via Nomentana, north-east of the historic centre of Rome. Turner’s view looks south-east towards the church on the left with its Romanesque bell-tower. On the right is the circular Church of Santa Costanza, also known as the Mausoleum of Constantina, and in the centre are the ruined remains of the elliptical walls of an early basilica built by Constantine.1 The composition is identical to that copied by Turner from Select Views in Italy by John ‘Warwick’ Smith as ‘Temple of Bacchus’, see the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (see Tate D13966, Turner Bequest CLXXII 19, third from top right).
Further studies of this complex of buildings can be found on folios 35 and 62 verso (D16454 and D16432; Turner Bequest CXC 40 and 25a), whilst a view of the interior of Santa Costanza appears on folio 62 (D16431; Turner Bequest CXC 25). Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the composition has been executed over a washed grey background.

Nicola Moorby
June 2009

1
Compare the same view by an anonymous eighteenth century artist in Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988, no.64, pp.236–7, reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Sant’Agnese fuori le mura, Santa Costanza and the Basilica Constantiniana, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-santagnese-fuori-le-mura-santa-costanza-and-the-basilica-r1132575, accessed 24 September 2024.