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 View on the Via Cassia with the Torre del Cornacchie and the distant dome of St Peter's 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View on the Via Cassia with the Torre del Cornacchie and the distant dome of St Peter's’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 89 Verso:
View on the Via Cassia with the Torre del Cornacchie and the distant dome of St Peter’s 1819
D14827
Turner Bequest CLXXVII 89 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner entered the city of Rome on the Via Cassia from the north. This inverted sketch represents a view of the Torre delle Cornacchie (Tower of Crows), a medieval tower that stands twenty metres high near La Storta on the Via Cassia, just outside of Rome.1 Turner’s sketch shows the tower on the right-hand side of the road which descends gently away from the foreground. In the distance on the right is the dome of St Peter’s. See also folio 86 verso (D14822). The irregular and shaky lines indicate that the artist was drawing the subject swiftly from a moving carriage.

Nicola Moorby
November 2008

1
See http://www.torredellecornacchie.it/index2.html, accessed November 2008.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View on the Via Cassia with the Torre del Cornacchie and the distant dome of St Peter’s 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-view-on-the-via-cassia-with-the-torre-del-cornacchie-and-the-r1138990, accessed 25 April 2024.