J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

The Ponte della Sanità is a viaduct in Naples, built during the early nineteenth century to carry the new road, Nuova Strada di Capodimonte or Corso Napoleone (present-day Corso Amedeo di Savoia), north from Via Toledo and the lower city centre to Capodimonte. This sketch depicts the view looking east from the bridge towards Vesuvius and Monte Somma. On the left-hand side of the composition is the seventeenth-century Church of Santa Maria della Sanità (also known as the Chiesa di San Vincenzo), which lies in the square beneath the bridge in a crowded quarter of the city. The basilica is built on the plan of a Greek cross with one central dome and twelve smaller lateral domes, Turner’s viewpoint depicts the south-east corner of the church with the campanile, part of the main dome and three of the lateral domes, which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century images show used to be topped by individual cupolas as here.1 The buildings on the right-hand side are unidentified and no longer extant but appear to represent a palazzo built on the slopes of the hill leading to Castel Sant’Elmo. For a related drawing of the Sanitá bridge and church see the Naples: Rome C. Studies sketchbook (Tate D16112; Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 24).