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 > Vatican Fragments Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Aqua Alexandrina, near the Porta Maggiore, Rome 1819

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Aqua Alexandrina, near the Porta Maggiore, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Verso:
Aqua Alexandrina, near the Porta Maggiore, Rome 1819
D15238
Turner Bequest CLXXX 75 a
Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘ab[?and]’ underneath sketch, bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Thomas Ashby identified the subject of the landscape sketches on this page as the Aqua Alexandrina, a Roman aqueduct on the eastern side of the city which terminated near the Porta Maggiore (also known as the Porta Prenestina).1 Turner has depicted a line of ruined arches crossing an open plain with mountains visible in the far distance. Jan Piggott has suggested that this drawing provided the basis for the composition of the later watercolour vignette, Campagna of Rome circa 1827 (Tate D27678; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 161).2

Nicola Moorby
December 2009

1
Thomas Ashby, unpublished notes, Turner Bequest Archive, Tate.
2
Piggott 1993, p.82.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Aqua Alexandrina, near the Porta Maggiore, Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 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-aqua-alexandrina-near-the-porta-maggiore-rome-r1139650, accessed 16 April 2024.