J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The subject of this sketch is Ariccia, one of the sixteen ‘Castelli Romani’ communes just outside of Rome which sits on a hill above a wooded valley between Lakes Albano and Nemi. According to classical mythology it was the favoured hunting ground of the Roman goddess Diana and this, along with its picturesque location, celebrated architecture, and rich historical heritage, made it an established destination for tourists. It was also a popular subject for landscape artists. Turner would have associated the town with the work of Gaspard Dughet (also known as Gaspard Poussin) and Richard Wilson, and may also have been familiar with depictions by contemporary British watercolourists such as Thomas Jones, Francis Towne and John ‘Warwick’ Smith.

On this page Turner records a view well-known to landscape artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the town seen from the road beneath the escarpment to the north-west. Turner had made a swift notational drawing of the topography on the previous page, see folio 83 (D15454; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 82) but this drawing contains more accurate architectural detail of the Palazzo Chigi on the left and Bernini’s Church of Santa Maria dell’Assunzione on the right. This viewpoint was a popular one and the composition exactly repeats that chosen by many other artists.1 Turner himself had copied a view after John ‘Warwick’ Smith’s in the Italian Guide Book sketchbook (see Tate D13968; Turner Bequest CLXXII 20). He had also depicted it in his illustration, La Riccia, (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts) based on a drawing by James Hakewill, engraved by John Pye and published in Picturesque Tour of Italy, 1819.2 For another sketch of a similar view see also the Naples, Paestum, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15939; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 16a). The prospect as Turner saw it was altered in 1854 when Pope Pius IX ordered the building of a bridge across the wooded valley from Albano.

Turner made several sketches of Ariccia, see folios 18 verso, 83–85 and 86 verso-88 (D15328, D15454–D15458 and D15460–D15463; Turner Bequest CLXXXII 82–85 and 86a–87).