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 Rocca at Forlimpopoli 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Rocca at Forlimpopoli’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 46 Recto:
The Rocca at Forlimpopoli 1819
D14572
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 42
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Partial watermark ‘Allnutt | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘42’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 42’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Various buildings’): ‘Fortifications of Rimini’.1 However, as Cecilia Powell has subsequently recognised, the subject is the imposing Renaissance Rocca at Forlimpopoli,2 a town between Forlì and Cesena. The view is south-west along the arcade on its western side, on what is now the Piazza Antonio Fratti, where the loosely indicated building at the centre does not survive. The south side of the fortress is shown on folio 47 verso (D14575; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 43a).

Powell has commented on the relatively uneventful phase of Turner’s journey between leaving Bologna and reaching Rimini (folios 43 recto–60 verso; D14566–D14598; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 39a–56a);3 for his overall route south-east between Bologna and Ancona, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
Owing to a typographical error, this page is listed in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory as ‘42a’,4 with the number repeated for the verso, which an ‘a’ suffix customarily signifies.

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 Powell 1984, p.406.
3
See Powell 1984, pp.89–90, 465 note 98.
4
Finberg 1909, p.518.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Rocca at Forlimpopoli 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-rocca-at-forlimpopoli-r1186308, accessed 10 May 2024.