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 > Albano, Nemi, Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Recto:
Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome 1819
D15403
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 56
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[?wall] seen thro’ underneath sketch bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘56’ bottom left, inverted and ‘301’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXII 56’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains two views of the so-called Temple of Minerva Medica and surrounding structures on the Esquiline Hill. Today the Temple can be found within a built-up suburb dominated by the railway lines leading to Termini station but in the nineteenth century it was more of a wasteland of Roman ruins. The Temple lay within a modern vineyard which Eustace recorded also contained ‘various subterranean vaulted apartments, some more, some less ornamented, the receptacles of the dead of various families.’1 Within this quarter could furthermore be found the remains of five aqueducts including the arches of the Aqua Claudio and Anio Novus converging at the nearby Porta Maggiore, and the Aqua Marcia, Tepula and Julia.2 Also in the vicinity was a castellum, terminus or distribution basin for these aqueducts, possibly the towered structure visible to the right. This building could be found approximately 100 metres south-east of the Temple until it was destroyed by fire in 1880.3
For a general discussion and further studies of the Temple see folio 56 (D15401, CLXXXII 55).

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, 3rd edition, vol.I, p.391.
2
Mariana Starke, Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent, Paris 1826, fifth edition p.142.
3
http://it.geocities.com/mp_pollett/roma–aq3.htm, accessed May 2008.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2008, 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-temple-of-minerva-medica-rome-r1132698, accessed 24 April 2024.