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 Ancona from the North, with the Cittadella Beyond 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ancona from the North, with the Cittadella Beyond’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 85 Recto:
Ancona from the North, with the Cittadella Beyond 1819
D14645
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 81
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...]’ towards bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘81’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CLXXVI – 81’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell queried Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry ‘Ancona’ with a question mark, and crossed out Finberg’s curly bracket (usually an indication of a continuous view) linking this page with folio 84 verso opposite (D14644; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 80a);1 the two drawings are indeed separate, albeit showing different aspects of Ancona from similar viewpoints, along the cliffs south-west of the Cathedral near where the redundant Victorian lighthouse now stands.
Here the view is south-south-west over the city, framed by the campanile of San Francesco alle Scale, since restored in plainer style without a cupola, on the right. Towards the top centre is the former church of San Francesco ad Alto; its tower has subsequently lost its upper stages. Beyond rises the Cittadella, now heavily wooded.
For Cecilia Powell and James Hamilton’s comments on Turner’s varied and extensive coverage of Ancona, which takes up most of the last quarter or so of this sketchbook, see under folio 69 verso (D14514; Turner Bequest CLXXVI 65a).2

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.519.
2
See Powell 1984, pp.92–3, 466 note 109, Powell 1987, pp.25, 202 note 45, and James Hamilton, Turner: A Life, London 1997, p.198.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ancona from the North, with the Cittadella Beyond 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-ancona-from-the-north-with-the-cittadella-beyond-r1186381, accessed 19 September 2024.