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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of a View of Lake Agnano and the Hill of Camaldoli; and Sketches of Lake Avernus with Monte Corvara 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
Part of a View of Lake Agnano and the Hill of Camaldoli; and Sketches of Lake Avernus with Monte Corvara 1819
D15707
Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 75
Pencil on white wove paper, 122 x 197 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘281’ top left, inverted and ‘75’ bottom left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXIV 75’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The sketch in the top right-hand corner of the page represents a view Lake Agnano, a former crater lake in the Campi Flegrei (Phlegraean or Burning Fields) which was drained in 1870. The lake was famously the site of the Grotto del Cane (Dog’s Grotto), so-called because dogs were traditionally used to demonstrate the effect of the poisonous fumes which arose from the cave. The vista depicts the view looking north-west across the lake towards the hill of Camaldoli on the left and Vesuvius on the right. The composition continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 76 verso (D15706; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 74a). For further related views see folios 75–75 verso and 77 (D15703–D15704 and D15707; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 73–73a and 75).
The remaining two views on the lower part of the page meanwhile appear to depict Lake Avernus and the ruins of the so-called Temple of Apollo, with Monte Corvara beyond. The dark cave opening on the left-hand side of the larger study represents the so-called Grotta della Sibilla (Grotto or Cave of the Cumaean Sibyl) on the north-west banks of the lake.1 For related views see folio 77 verso (D15708; Turner Bequest CLXXXIV 75a).

Nicola Moorby
June 2010

1
Compare a sketch by James Barry (1741–1806), Lake Avernus circa 1769 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), reproduced in William L. Pressly, ‘On Classic Ground: James Barry’s “Memorials” of the Italian Landscape’, in Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol.54, no.2, 1995, p.13, fig.1.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Part of a View of Lake Agnano and the Hill of Camaldoli; and Sketches of Lake Avernus with Monte Corvara 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-lake-agnano-and-the-hill-of-camaldoli-and-r1138168, accessed 19 March 2024.