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 > Gandolfo to Naples Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of the Castel Nuovo, Naples 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of the Castel Nuovo, Naples’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 59 Recto:
Part of the Castel Nuovo, Naples 1819
D15670
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 57
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘[? Naples]’ bottom centre
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ top left, inverted and ‘57’ bottom left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 57’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Cecilia Powell first identified, the subject of this sketch is part of the Castel Nuovo, a large fortress also known as the Maschio Angioino, which stands beside the quayside near the main port in Naples.1 Originally dating from the thirteenth century, the castle with its five cylindrical towers has been extended and rebuilt a number of times. The short, broad crenellated tower which is the main focus of this study once formed the north-west corner of the curtain wall surrounding the main castle. It is no longer extant but it stood on present-day Piazza Municipio and is clearly visible in paintings and prints from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2 In the background to the left can be seen the main entrance, the Arco di Trionfo, an elaborate white marble gateway which links the Torre di Mezzo and Torre di Guardia (Halfway and Watch Towers) on the western side of the fortress. Further studies of the Castel Nuovo can be seen on folios 59 verso, 64 verso–65 verso and 69 verso (D15671, D15683–D15685 and D15693; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 57a, 62a–63a and 67a).

Nicola Moorby
May 2010

1
Powell 1984, p.424.
2
See for example Antonio Joli (circa 1700–77), Carnival in front of Castel Nuovo, (Selkirk, Bowhill, Duke of Buccleuch), reproduced in colour in Giuliano Briganti, Nicola Spinosa and Lindsay Stainton, In the Shadow of Vesuvius: Views of Naples from Baroque to Romanticism 1631–1830, exhibition catalogue, Accademia Italiana delle Arti e dell arti Applicate, London 1990, p.47.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of the Castel Nuovo, Naples 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-the-castel-nuovo-naples-r1138132, accessed 18 April 2024.