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 > Naples, Paestum and Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Naples from the Sea, with the Immacolatella and Sant'Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Naples from the Sea, with the Immacolatella and Sant'Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Verso:
Naples from the Sea, with the Immacolatella and Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino 1819
D15915
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 4 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Finberg first identified, the sequence of sketches on folios 3 verso–12 (D15913–D15919 and D15922–D15930) represents detailed panoramic views of Naples drawn from the sea.1 The artist perhaps had the opportunity to make these drawings from a boat during the outward or return trip to Paestum and the Amalfi coast. Visible in this study is the quayside beside the old port of Naples with, in the centre, the Immacolatella, the eighteenth-century quarantine station which still stands on the waterfront near present-day Molo Immacolatella Vecchia.2 Rising beyond is the hill topped by the Certosa (Charterhouse) di San Martino and the Castel Sant’Elmo at its summit. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 5 (D15916). For further sketches of the Immacolatella see the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15632; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 39).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.551.
2
In certain eighteenth-century topographical engravings the building is known as the Palazzo della Deputazio.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Naples from the Sea, with the Immacolatella and Sant’Elmo and the Certosa di San Martino 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-naples-from-the-sea-with-the-immacolatella-and-santelmo-and-r1137841, accessed 25 April 2024.