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 > Paris, France, Savoy 2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Voie Sarde, near Les Échelles, with the Monument to Charles Emmanuel II 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Voie Sarde, near Les Échelles, with the Monument to Charles Emmanuel II’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio71 Recto:
The Voie Sarde, near Les Échelles, with the Monument to Charles Emmanuel II 1819
D14108
Turner Bequest CLXXIII 71
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 185 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘CA’ within sketch of monument
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIII 71’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the Voie Sarde (Sardinian Way), an ancient Roman road which passed through a natural canyon, just east of the village of Les Échelles. The passage was renovated during the seventeenth century by Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy (1634–1675), and this view depicts a monument which commemorates the Duke’s involvement. To the left of the structure is an entrance to a cave. The route was made obsolete during the early nineteenth century when Napoleon ordered the construction of a tunnel through the mountains, thereby by-passing the steep terraces of the Voie Sarde, see folio 73 (D14112). However, it remained of interest to tourists and travellers through the area.
As Turner’s sketch shows, the monument to Charles Emmanuel II comprises a decorative stone wall built into the rock face with a Latin inscription at the top. According to contemporary guide books the structure exhibited:
         
numerous marks of musket balls, received in a severe contest upon this spot between some French republicans and Savoyards, in the early part of the French revolution; but a paper sold by an old soldier, a cantonnier [person employed to keep the road in order], who keeps a hovel, and sells eau-de-vie at the end of the new gallery [Napoleonic tunnel], furnishes not only all of the inscription, which the balls of the revolutionists have made deficient, but a bombastic translation, in French, for the edification and amusement of travellers.1
Turner himself made a copy of the Latin inscription dating from 1670, see folio 71 verso (D14109) and a further related study can be found on folio 70 (D14106).

Nicola Moorby
March 2013

1
Brockendon’s Road Book from London to Naples, London 1835, p.59.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘The Voie Sarde, near Les Échelles, with the Monument to Charles Emmanuel II 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-voie-sarde-near-les-chelles-with-the-monument-to-charles-r1142967, accessed 21 September 2024.