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 Chiesa di San Paolo Apostolo, Tor Tre Ponti; and Distant Mountains 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Chiesa di San Paolo Apostolo, Tor Tre Ponti; and Distant Mountains’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Recto:
Chiesa di San Paolo Apostolo, Tor Tre Ponti; and Distant Mountains 1819
D15974
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 32
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘tre di tre ponti’ bottom centre left
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘32’ top right and ‘245’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVI 32’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Turner’s inscription indicates, the sketch at the bottom of this page depicts Tor Tre Ponti (also known as Treponti or Torre Tre Ponti), a small village and post-station near Latina amidst the Pontine Marshes which formed part of the nineteenth-century route between Rome and Naples. The building in the foreground in the Church of San Paolo Apostolo.1 The accuracy of Turner’s description can be ascertained by comparison with a near-contemporaneous drawing by James Hakewill (1778–1843), Torre dei Tre Ponti and Commencement of the Braschi Avenue 1817 (British School at Rome Library).2 For further views of Tor Tre Ponti see the Gandolfo to Naples sketchbook (Tate D15582; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 14a) and the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate D15110; Turner Bequest CLXXX 3a).
Also on this sheet is an inverted sketch of an unidentified landscape view of distant mountains.

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

1
http://www.rassegnanews.com/Cartolina_Storica_Tor_Tre_Ponti.jpg
2
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.5.36, p.262 reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Chiesa di San Paolo Apostolo, Tor Tre Ponti; and Distant Mountains 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-chiesa-di-san-paolo-apostolo-tor-tre-ponti-and-distant-r1137898, accessed 22 September 2024.