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 Three Sketches of Foligno,including the Piazza della Repubblica and two views of the Fifteenth-Century Gate 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Sketches of Foligno,including the Piazza della Repubblica and two views of the Fifteenth-Century Gate’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Verso:
Three Sketches of Foligno,including the Piazza della Repubblica and two views of the Fifteenth-Century Gate 1819
D14721
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 35 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Piazza | Grande’ and ‘This belongs to Foligno’ bottom left and ‘Foligno’ bottom left of top right sketch
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s passage through the Apennines took him out the Marche region of Italy and into Umbria where the first significant stop of note en routeto Rome was Foligno, a town extending across a large plain to the west of the mountains. Eustace described it in A Classical Tour Through Italy as ‘large ... yet a very indifferent town’,1 but despite his ambivalence, Foligno provided Turner with some interesting subjects for sketching. This page contains three distinct drawings of different views within the town.
In the bottom left-hand corner is a sketch which Turner has labelled ‘Piazza Grande’. This depicts part of the present-day Piazza della Repubblica, renamed during the twentieth century after the creation of the Italian Republic. Turner has taken an oblique viewpoint in the south-eastern corner of the square and the visible buildings include the Palazzo Comunale, the Palazzo Orfini, the Ex-Palazzo Comunale and the Palazzetto del Podestà. Above the inscription the artist has drawn a detailed study of part of the bell-tower of the Palazzo Comunale.
In the bottom right-hand corner is a general view of Foligno looking towards the fifteenth-century walls with a gate fortified by large towers (present-day Porta Romana). The dome of the cathedral and the spire of San Giacomo are visible on the horizon to the right. Turner would have seen this gate as he left the city on the Via Flaminia south towards Spoleto. Part of the sketch spills over onto the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 36 (D14722). The artist has also drawn a more detailed study of the gate above. Other sketches of Foligno can be found on folios 33 verso (D14717), 34 (D14718) and 34 verso (D14719), as well as in the Route to Rome sketchbook (Tate D13891 and D13896; Turner Bequest CLXXI 18 and 20 verso).

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
John Chetwode Eustace, A Classical Tour Through Italy, London 1815, vol.I, p.318.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Three Sketches of Foligno,including the Piazza della Repubblica and two views of the Fifteenth-Century Gate 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-three-sketches-of-folignoincluding-the-piazza-della-r1138884, accessed 27 April 2024.