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 Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome, with the Temple of Antonino and Faustina 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome, with the Temple of Antonino and Faustina’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Verso:
Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome, with the Temple of Antonino and Faustina 1819
D16306
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 81 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts a view in the grounds of the Villa Borghese, a large area of garden and parkland north of central Rome, built during the early seventeenth century for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V.1 The gardens contain many buildings, statues and monuments scattered between the trees. The classical structure in the bottom right-hand foreground represents the Temple of Diana, an ornamental ruin constructed in 1792 from fragments of ancient remains.2 The building in the centre meanwhile appears to be the Fortezzuola, a late eighteenth-century construction with medieval style walls, known today as the Museo Pietro Canonica.3 For a general discussion of the Borghese Gardens and related skethces see folio 62 (D16267; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 61).

Nicola Moorby
February 2009

1
See http://en.villaborghese.it/la_villa/storia, accessed February 2009.
2
See http://en.villaborghese.it/la_villa/arredi_architettonici__1/tempio_di_antonino_e_faustina, accessed February 2009.
3
See http://en.villaborghese.it/la_villa/edifici__1/fortezzuola_museo_pietro_canonica, accessed February 2009.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome, with the Temple of Antonino and Faustina 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-gardens-of-the-villa-borghese-rome-with-the-temple-of-r1139818, accessed 19 April 2024.