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

Turner made series of sketches from a boat as it navigated the Amalfi coast from Salerno to Sorrento, see folio 47 verso (D15824). The subject of this view is the town of Vietri sul Mare to the west of Salerno, identifiable by the seventeenth-century Church of San Giovanni Battista situated at the summit of a slope above the seafront. In the right-hand foreground is the Torre Cresterella, one of a number of sixteenth-century watch-towers dotted all along the coastline. A second structure, the Torre Albori, can be seen on the far left-hand side, beneath the town of Raito. Similar studies of Vietri can be seen on folio 36, 49–50 and 58 verso (D15805, D15827–D15829 and D15906), whilst inland vistas can be seen on folios 33 verso (D15800) and in the Naples, Paestum, Rome sketchbook (Tate D15993; Turner Bequest CLXXXVI 41a). Compare also an earlier view by John ‘Warwick’ Smith, View of Vietri 1778–9 (Tate, T08505).