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 Malatestiana, Fano 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Rocca Malatestiana, Fano’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Recto:
The Rocca Malatestiana, Fano 1819
D14605
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 60
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘60’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 60’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Fano’s imposing medieval and Renaissance fortress, the Rocca Malatestiana, is shown from the north-west. Modern buildings largely obscure the view, and the tallest tower has gone, that corner of the fortress having been in ruins since fierce fighting in 1944, during the Second World War.1 There are other views on folios 63 verso opposite and 65 recto (D14604, D14606; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 59a, 61).
Another Fano subject is shown on folio 62 verso (D14602; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 58a); because of this fairly extensive treatment, James Hamilton has suggested that Turner spent a night there.2 For Cecilia Powell’s comments on the relatively uneventful phase of Turner’s journey between leaving Rimini and reaching Ancona (folios 61 recto–69 recto; D14599–D14613; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 57–65), see under D14599.3
1
See ‘Rocca Malatestiana’, Turismo: Provincia di Pesaro e Urbino, accessed 7 March 2017, http://www.turismo.pesarourbino.it/elenco/rocche/fano-rocca-malatestiana.html.
2
See Hamilton 2009, p.42; see also Hamilton 2008, p.44.
3
See Powell 1984, pp.92, 466 note 108.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Rocca Malatestiana, Fano 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-malatestiana-fano-r1186341, accessed 19 September 2024.