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 Four Sketches of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, Including the Porta Maggiore 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Four Sketches of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, Including the Porta Maggiore’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 73 Recto:
Four Sketches of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, Including the Porta Maggiore 1819
D15435
Turner Bequest CLXXXII 72
Pencil on white wove paper, 189 x 113 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Porta Maggiore’ underneath sketch at top
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘72’ top left and ‘301’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXII 72’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page contains four variant views of the Aurelian Walls in Rome. The second sketch from the top clearly shows the outer side of the Porta Maggiore, also known as the Porta Praenestina, an ancient gate built to carry the waters of Rome’s two main aqueducts, the Aqua Claudius and the Aqua Anino Novus, over two of its major roads, the Via Labicana and Via Praenestina. The Emperor Aurelian later incorporated the arches of the gate into the line of his walls encircling the city, whilst in the middle ages, the Colonna family enclosed them within a fortified tower. See also folio 55 verso (D15400, CLXXXII 54a). The remaining three sketches on the page appear to show sections of wall and aqueduct seen near the gate. Cecilia Powell has suggested that they might have been executed from a moving vehicle.1

Nicola Moorby
May 2008

1
Powell 1984, p.472 note 11.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Four Sketches of the Aurelian Walls, Rome, Including the Porta Maggiore 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-four-sketches-of-the-aurelian-walls-rome-including-the-porta-r1132730, accessed 27 April 2024.