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 Three Sketches ?in the Grounds of the Villa Borghese, Rome, including a Distant View of St Peter's 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches ?in the Grounds of the Villa Borghese, Rome, including a Distant View of St Peter's’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
Three Sketches ?in the Grounds of the Villa Borghese, Rome, including a Distant View of St Peter’s 1819
D16528
Turner Bequest CXCI 23 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The locations of these three sketches have not been conclusively identified but the combination of trees, statues and buildings suggests that they may depict views in the grounds of the Villa Borghese, a large area of parkland north of central Rome, built during the early seventeenth century for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V.1 The panorama at the bottom of the page also appears to show a distant view of St Peter’s across what may be a lake. Other sketches of the Villa Borghese grounds can be found on folios 21–23 (D16523–D16527).

Nicola Moorby
February 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.428; see http://en.villaborghese.it/la_villa/storia, accessed February 2009.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Sketches ?in the Grounds of the Villa Borghese, Rome, including a Distant View of St Peter’s 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-three-sketches-in-the-grounds-of-the-villa-borghese-rome-r1138421, accessed 26 April 2024.