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 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Arco dei Pantani and the Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, from the Via di Tor de'Conti 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Arco dei Pantani and the Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, from the Via di Tor de'Conti’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Recto:
Arco dei Pantani and the Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, from the Via di Tor de’Conti 1819
D16185
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 15
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘W’ on building far left, ‘90’ within bell tower top left, ‘x’ within tower in centre and ‘Nov’ bottom centre left, left of arch
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 15’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch, taken from the Via di Tor de’Conti shows the view at the back of the Forum of Augustus. On the left-hand side is the Arco dei Pantani and part of the black peperino wall of the adjacent Forum of Nerva. Visible beyond are the columns of the Temple of Mars Ultor and the campanile of the convent of Santa Maria Annunziata, see folio 14 verso (D16185). On the right is the Palazzo del Marchese del Grillo, a palace built for the del Grillo family with a large tower.
Vistas of the Forum of Augustus from either side of the wall were popular with artists for around three hundred years. For views similar to Turner’s sketch see for example Antonio Canaletto, Temple of Mars Ultor and the Arco dei Pantani, pen and wash (British Museum),1 Guiseppe Vasi’s etching, S. Maria Annunziata 1758, and Piranesi’s, Veduta degli avanti del Foro Nerva, for the engraved series Veduta di Roma, (1748–78).2

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Reproduced in Thomas Ashby and W.G. Constable, ‘Canaletto and Bellotto in Rome – II’, Burlington Magazine, vol.46, no.267, June 1925, p.292.
2
Luigi Ficacci, Piranesi: The Complete Etchings, Köln and London 2000, no.919, reproduced p.712.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Arco dei Pantani and the Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome, from the Via di Tor de’Conti 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-arco-dei-pantani-and-the-temple-of-mars-ultor-rome-from-the-r1139694, accessed 24 April 2024.