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 > Rome and Florence Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Interior of San Paolo fuori le mura, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Interior of San Paolo fuori le mura, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
Interior of San Paolo fuori le mura, Rome 1819
D16502
Turner Bequest CXCI 10
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Cor’ within the line of columns on left and ‘Popes’ within sketch upper centre
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘10’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXCI 10’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg identified the subject of this sketch as the interior of San Paolo fuori le mura (St Paul ‘extra Muros’, or ‘outside the walls’),1 one of the four great papal basilicas of Rome.2 Like the artist’s 1819 sketches of the interior of St Peter’s (see Tate D16309; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 83), this study, executed swiftly in the relative gloom of the church, is principally concerned with exploring the complex perspective of the architectural arrangement of the building. The composition appears to take a view across from the transept towards the thirteenth-century ciborium of Arnolfo di Cambio (circa 1240–1300/10), the canopy which covers the high altar in the apse of the cathedral.3 This feature can still be seen today despite the building’s almost complete destruction by fire in July 1823. Turner’s inscription in the upper centre of the drawing, ‘Popes’, refers to the series of papal portraits which appear in roundels below the windows, whilst the annotation ‘Cor’ indicates that the order of the columns is Corinthian.
Sketches of the exterior of the basilica can be found on folios 7 verso, 9 verso, 12 verso and 14 verso (D16497, D16501, D16507 and D16511) and in the St Peter’s sketchbook (see Tate D16256; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 55v).

Nicola Moorby
February 2009

1
Finberg 1909, vol.I, p.567.
2
The others are St Peter’s, San Giovanni in Laterano and Santa Maria Maggiore.
3
Compare Luigi Rossini’s engraving, Veduta interna della basilica di S. Paolo presa di immediatemente dopo il suo incendio, reproduced in Anita F. Moskowitz, ‘Arnolfo, Non-Arnolfo: New (And Some Old) Observations on the Ciborium in San Paolo fuori le mura’, Gesta, vol.37, no.1, 1998, p.93, fig.10.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Interior of San Paolo fuori le mura, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2009, 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-interior-of-san-paolo-fuori-le-mura-rome-r1138395, accessed 02 November 2025.