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 > Ancona to Rome Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Serravalle di Chienti; and a Distant View of the Rocca di Varano 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Serravalle di Chienti; and a Distant View of the Rocca di Varano’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Verso:
Serravalle di Chienti; and a Distant View of the Rocca di Varano 1819
D14707
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 28 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Serravalle’ bottom centre left and ‘[?Ro...] underneath sketch along left-hand edge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner has used this page both horizontally and vertically. As the inscribed place name indicates the main landscape sketch depicts Serravalle di Chienti, a small town in the Apennines approximately fifteen miles north-east of Foligno. Turner’s viewpoint is from the south-west looking down a valley with the town surrounded on all sides by mountains.
With the sketchbook turned vertically the artist has also drawn a distant view of the Rocca di Varano, a decaying fortress perched on the summit of a steep peak between Campolarzo and Camerino, see folio 26 verso (D14704).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Serravalle di Chienti; and a Distant View of the Rocca di Varano 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2008, 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-serravalle-di-chienti-and-a-distant-view-of-the-rocca-di-r1138870, accessed 20 September 2024.