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 Part of a View of Naples from the Steps of San Nicola da Tolentino; and Studies in the Cloister 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of a View of Naples from the Steps of San Nicola da Tolentino; and Studies in the Cloister’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 49 Verso:
Part of a View of Naples from the Steps of San Nicola da Tolentino; and Studies in the Cloister 1819
D16005
Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 47 v
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Sta Ursula Bene [?grafico] | n St Orsola | St Nicolo Tolentino’ top right, and ‘17’ and ‘L’ within sketch of portico. Also ‘AD | VRBIS TUTELAM |ET | LEVAMEN’ far right, parallel with right-hand edge
As Turner’s inscriptions indicate, the sketches on the right-hand side of this page represent studies within the cloister of the Church of San Nicola da Tolentino, which lies on the lower slopes of the hill below Certosa di San Martino and Castel Sant’Elmo, beside the monastic complex of Suor Orsola Benincasa (now the headquarters for the university of the same name on present-day Corso Vittorio Emanuele). On the left-hand side meanwhile is a view of the exterior of the church, part of the panoramic composition continued on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 50 (D16006; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 84). Turner’s viewpoint is the top of the stairs which lead into the adjacent monastery looking south towards the front of the basilica with its buttressed sides. The same building from the other side can be seen in the foreground of a coloured study in the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16101; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 13).
The paper is discoloured owing to light exposure dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see folio 49 (D16004; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 47).

Nicola Moorby
July 2010

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of a View of Naples from the Steps of San Nicola da Tolentino; and Studies in the Cloister 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-part-of-a-view-of-naples-from-the-steps-of-san-nicola-da-r1137929, accessed 25 April 2024.