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 View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica and the Porta San Lorenzo 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica and the Porta San Lorenzo’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Verso:
View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica and the Porta San Lorenzo 1819
D16436
Turner Bequest CXC 27 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
This sketch depicts a view of the Aurelian Walls in Rome with the circular Temple of Minerva Medica visible beyond. Turner’s location is not, as Finberg suggested near the Protestant Cemetery, but north-east of the centre of the city, near the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le mura. On the far right is the Porta San Lorenzo (also known as the Porta Tiburtina). Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the pencil work has been executed over a washed grey background.
Related compositions can be found on folios 65 and 66 (Tate D16437–D16438; Turner Bequest CXC 28–29) and in the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (see Tate D15432–D15434; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 70a–71a). There is also a coloured version of the subject in the Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16363; Turner Bequest CLXXXIX 36).

Nicola Moorby
June 2009

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica and the Porta San Lorenzo 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-view-of-the-aurelian-walls-rome-with-the-temple-of-minerva-r1132581, accessed 19 April 2024.