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, Porta San Lorenzo and Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica, Porta San Lorenzo and Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 65 Recto:
View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica, Porta San Lorenzo and Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore 1819
D16437
Turner Bequest CXC 28
Pencil and grey watercolour wash on white wove paper, 130 x 255 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?...]’ bottom centre left of sketch
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin with traces of red ink top right and by an unknown hand in pencil ‘28’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXC 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts a view of the Aurelian Walls in Rome. Turner’s location is not, as Finberg suggested, near the Protestant Cemetery, but north of the centre of the city, near the Church of San Lorenzo fuori le mura. Visible beyond the line of the walls are various landmarks (from left to right): the roof of the circular Temple of Minerva Medica; in the far distance the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano; the Porta San Lorenzo (also known as the Porta Tiburtina); and on the far right, the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Like many drawings within this sketchbook, the pencil work has been executed over a washed grey background.
Related compositions can be found on folios 64 verso and 66 (Tate D16436 and D16438; Turner Bequest CXC 27a and 29) and in the Albano, Nemi, Rome sketchbook (see Tate D15432–D15534; 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).
Verso:
Blank except for traces of grey watercolour

Nicola Moorby
June 2009

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, with the Temple of Minerva Medica, Porta San Lorenzo and Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore 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-r1132582, accessed 18 April 2024.