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 The River Tiber, near the Fontana dell'Acqua Acetosa, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Tiber, near the Fontana dell'Acqua Acetosa, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 41 Recto:
The River Tiber, near the Fontana dell’Acqua Acetosa, Rome 1819
D16226
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 40
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 40’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the countryside on the northern outskirts of Rome with the meandering course of the River Tiber. Turner’s viewpoint looks up-river from the Fontana dell’Acqua Acetosa, a seventeenth-century fountain designed by Andrea Sacchi which still survives today. The tower visible on the left-hand side is possibly the Tor di Quinto, one of a number of towers built in this area of the Campagna by Leo IV (Pope, 847–855 AD) for the protection of the city.1 The panorama continues on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 40 verso (D16225; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 39a). A similar view can be found on folio 40 (D16224; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 39).

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Raymond Keaveney, Views of Rome from the Thomas Ashby Collection in the Vatican Library, exhibition catalogue, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1988, p.232.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The River Tiber, near the Fontana dell’Acqua Acetosa, Rome 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-the-river-tiber-near-the-fontana-dellacqua-acetosa-rome-r1139738, accessed 11 May 2024.