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 Villa Borghese, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Interior of Villa Borghese, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Recto:
?Interior of Villa Borghese, Rome 1819
D16518
Turner Bequest CXCI 18
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘18’ bottom right [very faint]
Stamped in black ‘CXCI 18’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg tentatively suggested that this study of an interior may represent St Peter’s in Rome.1 The identity of the subject remains uncertain, although it may depict the entrance and portico of Villa Borghese (present-day Galleria or Museo Borghese). Turner visited the seventeenth-century palace in order to view the masterpieces of the Borghese collection. He made studies and notes of many of the paintings in the Remarks (Italy) sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXCIII), and a drawing made from one of the upper storeys can also be found on folio 20 (D16522).

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

1
Finberg 1909, p.568.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘?Interior of Villa Borghese, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-interior-of-villa-borghese-rome-r1138411, accessed 20 April 2024.