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 > Tivoli to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Grand Cascade, Tivoli, from the Ponte San Rocco 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Grand Cascade, Tivoli, from the Ponte San Rocco’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
The Grand Cascade, Tivoli, from the Ponte San Rocco 1819
D15070
Turner Bequest CLXXIX 75 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Grey’ centre left-hand edge and ‘water’ within centre of sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the ‘Grand Cascade’ of Tivoli, the large waterfall created by the falling point of the River Aniene plunging into the gorge at a point near present-day Piazza Rivarola. Turner’s viewpoint is looking south from the Ponte San Rocco, a wooden crossing near erected upon the foundations of a previous stone structure swept away in a flood in 1808. Visible on the far left-hand side of the composition is the Church of Santa Maria del Ponte. Alternative studies are on folios 66 verso and 67 verso (D15051 and D15053), whilst similar views including the bridge within the composition can be found on folios 2 verso, 3 and 89 verso (D14936, D14937 and D15096), and in the Tivoli sketchbook (Tate D15494; Turner Bequest CLXXXIII 27). It is no longer possible to find the same vantage point in present-day Tivoli. Another devastating flood in 1826 persuaded Pope Gregory XVI to divert the course of the river away from the residential district. Consequently, the town’s many falls, including the Grand Cascade, were replaced instead by the great waterfall in the Villa Gregoriana to the north-east of the town. Furthermore, the topography of the town was vastly altered and the wooden Ponte San Rocco was succeeded by the newly-built Ponte Gregoriano.
The picturesque properties of this prospect had made it a popular subject for artists, and by the early nineteenth century the vista had become a well-established topographical motif. Early examples include Gaspar van Wittel’s (1652/3–1736), View of Tivoli circa 1700 (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore), which pictures an artist sketching the view from a point below the Temple of Vesta,1 and Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Veduta della Cascata di Tivoli from the Vedute di Roma.2 Compare also a contemporaneous drawing by James Hakewill (1778–1843), Tivoli 1817 (British School at Rome Library).3 Prior to embarking on his 1819 tour of Italy, Turner had made a small pen-and-ink copy of a similar view by John ‘Warwick’ Smith, from Select Views in Italy, published in two volumes between 1792–9 (see Italian Guide Book sketchbook, Tate D13966; Turner Bequest CLXXII 19). Furthermore he would also have been familiar with the description of the view in Revd John Chetwode Eustace’s famous travel guide, A Classical Tour Through Italy (see Italian Guide Book sketchbook, Tate D13951; Turner Bequest CLXXII 11):
This river [the Aniene] ... glides gently through Tivoli till coming to the brink of a rock it precipitates itself in one mass down the steep, and then boiling for an instant in its narrow channel rushes headlong through a chasm in the rock into the caverns below. The first fall may be seen from the windows of the inn or from the temple; but it appears to the greatest advantage from the bridge thrown over the narrow channel a little below it. From this bridge also you may look down into the shattered rock, and observe far beneath the writhings and agitation of the stream struggling through its rocky prison.4

Nicola Moorby
February 2010

1
Reproduced at http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=11864, accessed December 2009.
2
Luigi Ficacci, Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, Köln and London 2000, no.946, reproduced p.727.
3
Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A Catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, no.5.7, pp.230–1, reproduced.
4
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, 3rd edition, vol.II, pp.229–30.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Grand Cascade, Tivoli, from the Ponte San Rocco 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2010, 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-the-grand-cascade-tivoli-from-the-ponte-san-rocco-r1137705, accessed 18 April 2024.