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 View of Roman Campagna, from the Fontana dell' Acqua Acetosa and the Villa Glori, Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of Roman Campagna, from the Fontana dell' Acqua Acetosa and the Villa Glori, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
View of Roman Campagna, from the Fontana dell’ Acqua Acetosa and the Villa Glori, Rome 1819
D16228
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 41
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘Scalett[e/i]’ bottom centre right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘41’ bottom right (very faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXXVIII 41’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Thomas Ashby identified the viewpoint for this sketch of the Roman Campagna and the winding course of the River Tiber as the northern outskirts of Rome near the Villa Glori and the Fontana del Acqua Acetosa, a seventeenth-century fountain designed by Andrea Sacchi which still survives today.1 He believed that the inscription ‘scalette’ probably referred to the stairs of the fountain. This may suggest that Turner was shown the place by an Italian-speaking guide.

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Thomas Ashby, unpublished notes, Turner Bequest Archive, Tate.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘View of Roman Campagna, from the Fontana dell’ Acqua Acetosa and the Villa Glori, 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-view-of-roman-campagna-from-the-fontana-dell-acqua-acetosa-r1139740, accessed 27 April 2024.