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 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Plains of Lombardy from the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, Bologna 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Plains of Lombardy from the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, Bologna’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Verso:
The Plains of Lombardy from the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, Bologna 1819
D14561
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 36a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Blue’ towards top right, and ‘9 L 3 S 2 L’ centre right, over bridge
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing continues across folio 41 recto opposite (D14562; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 37), where Turner noted the subject. The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘“Plains of Lombardy” in distance’): ‘View from the Madonna di San Luca’.1 The viewpoint appears to be west of the hill-top Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, looking north-west; the prospect is now obscured by trees along the Via di San Luca.
For the Sanctuary itself, under folio 42 recto (D14564; CLXXVI 38);2 and for Bologna in general and numerous views on adjacent pages, under folio 24 recto (D14532).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

1
Undated MS note by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.518.
2
See also Cecilia Powell, ‘Turner on Classic Ground: His Visits to Central and Southern Italy and Related Paintings and Drawings’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London 1984, pp.84–6.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Plains of Lombardy from the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, Bologna 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-plains-of-lombardy-from-the-sanctuary-of-the-madonna-di-r1186297, accessed 25 April 2024.