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TURNER’S VISIONS 
 OF ROME 
 

 
TURNER'S 
 VISIONS OF ROME 
 
 By 
 Dr. THOMAS ASHBY 
 
 (Director of the British School at Rome) 
 
 
 
 1925 
 London: Halton & Truscott Smith, Ltd. 
 New York: Minton, Balch & Company. 
 
 (Printed in Great Britain) 
 
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 Printed in Great Britain by 
 ' Herbert Reiach, Ltd., Eyot 
 Works, St. Peter’s Square, 
 Hammersmith, London, W.6 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ie Introduction 
 
 Il. Turner’s Earliest fenen Bieetehes 
 III. Turner’s Visits to Rome 
 IV. Turner’s Visions of Rome 
 V. Turner’s Visions of Tivoli 
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 IN COLOUR 
 
 Gardens outside Rome 
 
 Rome from Monte Mario 
 
 Rome from the Gardens of the Villa Lante 
 Nymphzum of Alexander Severus 
 
 The Claudian Aqueduct 
 
 Campagna: Snowy Apennines in Distance 
 
 The Colosseum 
 
 Arches of Constantine and Titus 
 
 Church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo 
 
 The Alban Mount 
 
 Roman Campagna : Sunset.. 
 Tivoli : Town with Cascades and the Campagna 
 
 IN MONOCHROME 
 
 The Tiber 
 
 Stone Pines on Monte Mario 
 
 Roman Campagna : Morning 
 
 Piazza del Popolo, with the Churches of Santa Maria i in 
 Monte Santo and Sante Maria de’ Miracoli . 
 
 The Tiber and Castle of St. Angelo 
 
 St. Peter’s and the Vatican . 
 
 General View of Rome 
 
 Rome : The Capitol . 
 
 Foreground in Rome 
 
PLATES 
 
 The Colosseum and Basilica of Constantine es 
 The Colosseum and Arch of Constantine . Ra Fis 
 The Palatine . . ee 
 Temple of Vesta, Tivoli . ; . 225 
 The Villa of Maecenas and Campagna : : Mee. 
 Arcadesand Waters . | a 
 
 The Villa of Mzecenas, Tal A . ee 
 
TURNER’S VISIONS OF ROME 
 
 if 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 O those who only know his pictures in oils Turner’s 
 
 sketches and drawings come asa great surprise. The 
 
 collection which he bequeathed to the nation contains 
 
 over 19,000 pieces of paper that have been drawn 
 upon ; and the drawings are in the most diverse states of com- 
 pleteness and perfection, ranging from a hasty pencil sketch in 
 a tiny notebook, to a beautifully coloured drawing based upon 
 a careful pencil outline. Itis, of course, only since the publica- 
 tion of Mr. Finberg’s ‘‘ Complete Inventory of the Drawings of 
 the Turner Bequest ’’ (London, 1909), that the collection has 
 been at all readily accessible for study ; and even so, it is only 
 the 600 odd exhibited drawings (consisting of four groups which 
 are shown in rotation) that have become at all familiar to the 
 general public. The vast majority of these are coloured, and 
 the pencil drawings are really very little known. 
 
 On his first visit to Rome in 1819, Turner was at the height 
 of his powers; and he devoted to the city and its neighbourhood 
 far more attention than to any other part of Italy, using over . 
 600 leaves of several sketchbooks, many of which are also drawn 
 upon the reverse. Comparatively few (one twentieth, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Finberg’s reckoning) of them are coloured—it was 
 not, as we shall see, his usual practice, when travelling, to 
 colour in the field; and he did not, it would seem, go back to 
 work up these memoranda afterwards. Indeed it is surprising 
 how little use he really made of them, and how little store he 
 seemed to set by them. 
 
 To us, on the other hand, they are a treasure without price ; 
 and this special group, dealing with the city of Rome, which we 
 have selected for examination, has an interest of itsown. Apart 
 from their great artistic merits they are extraordinarily 
 valuable as very careful renderings of what Turner actually 
 saw before him, now that Rome, as the Capital of Italy, has 
 grown out of all knowledge, and has quintupled her population 
 
 1 
 
since Turner’s time. Mr. Finberg’s supposition’ that their 
 “value from a topographical point of view—i.e., as giving 
 information pure and simple—is probably diminished by the 
 fact that the material they contain is so skilfully selected and 
 arranged ’’ is, as I have already pointed out’ entirely incorrect. 
 I have tested them in details, and have in every case found the 
 representation to be scrupulously accurate. Mr. Finberg’s 
 criticism of them, as probably unsatisfactory from Turner’s 
 own point of view, is, I think, just; his omnivorous taste 
 included many drawings of small cinerary urns in the Vatican 
 Museum, and he even took the trouble to copy the inscriptions 
 upon them, as he did the inscription on the Arch of Constantine ; 
 though sculpture as such obviously did not interest him, any 
 more than did the human figure, of which we find very few 
 studies in the whole vast range of his drawings. 
 
 But for the present this matters little to us. ‘Turner would 
 probably not have been at all pleased had we devoted so much 
 attention to these drawings, and so little to the pictures that 
 grew out of them. We may, however, perhaps be permitted 
 in this instance to take our own point of view, and not to criticise 
 these drawings for not being what they are not meant to be, but 
 to regard them in and for themselves; and as such we shall find 
 them entirely deserving of Ruskin’s praise’ as being ‘‘ the best 
 drawings made by Turner from Nature.’’ ‘‘ All the artist’s 
 powers,” he says, ‘‘ were at this period in perfection; none of 
 his faults had developed themselves, and his energies were taxed 
 to the utmost to seize, both in immediate admiration, and 
 for future service, the loveliest features of some of the most 
 historically interesting scenery in the world. There is no 
 exaggeration in any of these drawings, nor any conventionalism 
 but that of outline. They are in all respects the most fine and 
 the most beautiful ever made by the painter. The quantity of 
 detail given in their distances can only be seen, in a natural 
 landscape, by persons possessing the strongest and finest 
 faculties of sight; and the tones of colour adopted in them can 
 
 1 “© Turner’s Sketches and Drawings,’’ 93. 
 
 2 BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, XXIV, 218-224; cf. XXV, 98-104; 241-247. I am 
 indebted to the Editor for kind permission to make use of part of the substance of 
 these articles. 
 
 > “Turner Catalogue ’’ (1881). National Gallery edition, 1899, p. 37. 
 
 2 
 
only be felt by persons of the subtlest colour-temperament, and 
 happily trained colour disposition.”’ 
 
 The rapidity with which Turner’s pencil worked is remark- 
 able; he was not in Rome and its neighbourhood for more than 
 three months at the most; but as a distinguished artist of the 
 present day once said to me, ‘‘ Turner never had to rub out.”’ 
 
 It is a great pleasure to turn over the leaves of one of these 
 sketchbooks and follow Turner, as he wandered along the right 
 bank of the Tiber, and drew the old church of S. Paul outside 
 the walls, which was burnt down only four years later; and 
 then further upstream on the same afternoon, drew the Aven- 
 tine as it is seen overhanging the river, and those portions of 
 the walls of Aurelian which lie nearest to the Tiber, now so 
 largely destroyed or concealed by modern buildings. Oragain 
 we may follow him at the Villa Madama on the heights over- 
 looking the Ponte Molle; or on the further side of the Via 
 Flaminia, whence the other side of the bridge and the curve of 
 the Tiber at the Acqua Acetosa are the most prominent of 
 nearer objects, while the snowy Apennines are indicated with 
 a few masterly strokes in the distance. Even Mr. Finberg 
 cannot help “‘ waxing enthusiastic over the exquisitely deft and 
 graceful play of hand, the subtle observation, and the almost 
 superhuman mastery of the design.”’ It is because Turner’s 
 sketches were never intended for any other eye but his own 
 that they must be regarded very differently from John Cozens’ 
 not less beautiful water-colours, which were worked up off the 
 spot from studies from nature, with a certain amount of 
 arbitrary changes. Of these indeed different versions often 
 exist, intended for different patrons. In them we naturally 
 miss the precision which we find in Turner’s sketches,* and 
 they should rather be compared with his pictures. I have not 
 had the good fortune to see the Beckford sketchbooks of John 
 Cozens, so as to be able to compare them with those of Turner ; 
 but as it does not seem that the original sketches for any of the 
 views in Rome and its neighbourhood are preserved, this 
 perhaps matters less. 
 
 For the same reason, that-Turner put down exactly what 
 
 “ Contrast Cozens’ rendering of Tivoli (Plate XX of the Burlington Fine 
 Arts Club Catalogue) with that of Turner (our Plate 25) where the point of view 
 is much the same. 
 
 3 
 
he saw, questions of design and composition do not come in. 
 Evidence of alteration to suit his purpose I have not been able 
 to find ; he appears to have registered with absolutely scrupulous 
 accuracy what was before him, at any rate in the drawings we 
 have selected. Rougher sketches of course there are, but this 
 is probably simply a question of time; and it is wonderful that 
 he did accomplish so much. ‘The ‘most then that we can 
 criticise, once we have admitted that he was doing this particular 
 thing for his own purposes and his own private pleasure and 
 use, is his choice of subject and choice of point of view; and 
 here, I think, we cannot but commend him highly. 
 
 An interesting characteristic of these drawings is the fact 
 that the same buildings and natural features frequently recur 
 in them from different points of view. This will be noticed 
 even in the selection presented here, and is far more prominent 
 when the original sketchbooks are examined. 
 
 Sometimes this Turner, strange to those who know his 
 ordinary aspect, will ascend to sucha vantage point as the tower 
 of the Capitol, or the summit of the Church of SS. Cosma e 
 Damiano near the Forum, and execute two panoramas, each 
 occupying two leaves of a sketchbook, so that we have the 
 whole circle of vision presented to us. 
 
 I think we may claim that both for their artistic beauty 
 and for their intrinsic interest these drawings of Turner’s rank 
 very high among the representations of Rome as it was, and 
 as alas! we shall see it no longer. Much, it is true (though not 
 all) of the destruction was inevitable, and indissolubly bound 
 up with the development of Rome, since 1870 the capital of a 
 great country; and that development is even now proceeding 
 faster, perhaps, than that of any other city in the world. The 
 character of the Campagna, once a desert, and now already in 
 considerable measure coming under cultivation, has radically 
 changed within my own recollection, which goes back no 
 further than 1890. But very much of beauty is still left, both 
 within the city and without it; and the wonderful lights of 
 sunrise and sunset, the atmosphere, so clear without ever being 
 hard, the background of mighty mountains on the east, and of 
 lesser hills on the north and south, as one looks from any point 
 of vantage in or just outside Rome—all that can never change. 
 
 4 
 
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 TONGd—aadIL AHL ‘Ll ALV Id 
 
 
 

 
Despite Mr. Ruskin’s warning that these drawings are ‘‘ essen- 
 tially Turnerian, representing those qualities of form and colour 
 in which the painter himself most delighted, and which persons 
 of greatly inferior or essentially different faculties need not 
 hope for benefit by attempting to copy,”’ one cannot but feel 
 glad that the traditional connexion of the best young British 
 artists with Rome, which of late years had been almost entirely 
 broken, has now been renewed. 
 
 II 
 TURNER’S EARLIEST ITALIAN SKETCHES 
 
 There are a number of drawings of Rome and its neigh- 
 bourhood which, as being copies of other artists’ works, 
 executed before Turner ever visited Italy, do not enter into our 
 survey. The best known of these are the splendid water- 
 colours after Hakewill’s pencil sketches. ‘The latter were all 
 executed in 1816-17, before Turner had ever been to Italy. 
 
 Despite what earlier critics have said to the contrary, there 
 is no practical doubt that Turner, who in some cases (and some 
 only) might have corrected his impressions during or after his 
 visit to Italy, did not, as a fact, do anything of the kind. I 
 fully agree with Mr. Rawlinson’s remark (‘‘ Water-colours of 
 Turner,’ p. 18), that they were probably all finished before he 
 left England. ‘This being so, it is perhaps surprising how high 
 are the prices that have been reached by these water-colours. 
 Six of them, from Dr. Munro’s collection, were sold at 
 Christie’s on April 29, 1869 (Lots 141-146), and fetched 
 respectively £110 5s. od. (Hakewill, No. 25, Rome from Monte 
 Mario); £233 2s. od. (No. 21, Forum); £126 os. od. (No. 20, 
 Forum from Capitol Tower); £267 15s. od. (No. 37, Cectha 
 Metella); £236 15s. od. (No. 58, Florence from Ftesole); and 
 £351 15s. od. (No. 49, Florence from Ponte alla Carrata). No. 
 58 was exhibited by Messrs. Agnew in April and May, 1913, 
 
 ’ Such, too, are water-colours like that of Tivoli executed in 1817 (Bell, 
 ‘‘ Exhibited Works,’’ p. 52, No. 78), which is a view looking down the gorge, 
 and the view looking up the gorge at South Kensington (No. 3054/76 :. “‘ Catalogue 
 of Water-colours,’’ p. 361), which was reproduced in an article on Horace’s Villa 
 
 at Tivoli by Mr. G. H. Hallam and myself in the ‘‘ Journal of Roman Studies ”’ 
 (IV, pl. XVII). 
 
 5 
 
in aid of the funds of the Artists’ Benevolent Fund (No. 112 
 of the Catalogue), and they also exhibited his drawings for 
 Hakewill, No. 8, Narni, Bridge of Augustus (Catalogue No. 
 112A), 42, Lake of Nemi (104),° 62, Isola Bella (101), 63, Turin 
 from the Superga (98).° Mr. Ruskin gave 500 guineas and more 
 for No. 7, Cascade of Terni (No. 16 of his own catalogue) at 
 Christie’s, which, like No. 25 (Ruskin, No. 17), did not pass 
 into Messrs. Agnew’s hands. 
 
 It has been already pointed out by Mr. C. F. Bell (‘‘ Turner 
 and his Engravers ’”’ in ‘‘ The Genius of Turner,’’ p. E. vi), 
 that whereas “‘ the eighteen drawings to illustrate the ‘ Tour 
 of Italy ’ are apparently none of them dated, it is known that 
 Hakewill’s original sketches, upon which they were founded, 
 were made in 1816-17, while the earliest plate, the Bridge and 
 Castle of Saint Angelo (No. 10) appeared on October 1, 1818, 
 and the last, the Forum Romanum, was published upon 
 August 1, 1820. 
 
 ‘Writers who ought to have known better have allowed it 
 to be inferred from their words that the Hakewill subjects were 
 drawn in the first instance from Nature by Turner, although 
 it is certain that only the seven latest published plates can have 
 benefited even in their final retouching from his personal 
 knowledge of the scenes they represent.”’ 
 
 Mr. Bell’s statement can be confirmed by an examination 
 of Hakewill’s original pencil sketches, which form a part of 
 the collection of over 300 pencil drawings by him, presented 
 to the British School at Rome by the executors of the late Mr. 
 Michael Tomkinson, of Franche Hall, Kidderminster. All of 
 those subsequently engraved in ‘“‘ The Tour of Italy ’’ bear dates 
 between June, 1816 (No. 63), and June, 1817 (No. 62). 
 
 Unfortunately, several of Hakewill’s sketches correspond- 
 ing with the engravings (most, I imagine, if not all, of the 
 nineteen which are not in the possession of the School, includ- 
 ing nine of those which were redrawn by Turner for the 
 engravers) had been placed in, and were sold with, the copy of 
 Hakewill’s Italy in Mr. Tomkinson’s library, though they were 
 not catalogued with it. This copy was bought by Messrs. 
 
 * “The Water-colours of J. M. W. Turner ’’ (STUDIO, 1909), Pls. XI (42), 
 XII (63). 
 
 6 
 
PLATE 2 
 GARDENS OUTSIDE ROME 
 (CXC, 64) 
 
 It is not difficult to fix our point of view—it 
 is the prominent spur of Monte Mario, crowned 
 by the Villa Mellini, which projects towards the 
 Tiber to the south of the Villa Madama. The 
 dome of S. Peter’s and the northern part of 
 the city are faintly seen. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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Bumpus at Sotheby’s in July, 1922, for a client whose identity 
 has so far not been disclosed. For this reason, and also owing 
 to the non-existence of reproductions of any of the others of 
 Turner’s water-colours after Hakewill, I have only been able 
 to make the comparison in two instances—Nos. 42 (Nemi—IV, 
 20 in the set of drawings) and 63 (Turin from the Superga—ll, 
 17), of Hakewill with the two water-colours reproduced in ‘‘ The 
 Water-colours of J. M. W. Turner ”’ (Pls. XI, XII) cited above. 
 Now, the original of the Nemi was drawn in April, 1817; but 
 the colouring is not an April colouring at all. The engraving 
 was published on December 1, 1819, and it is more than doubtful 
 whether Turner had seen the lake before he made the sketch. 
 He has suppressed the sea between the coast and Monte Circeo, 
 and slightly changed the lines of the hills to suit himself. The 
 original of the view of Turin was drawn in June, 1816; but 
 Turner has put in far more snow than Hakewill ever saw, and 
 has completely changed the outlines of the mountain peaks. 
 That lofty range of dazzling white in the left centre has no 
 parallel in the original pencil sketch. As the engraving was 
 published on March 1, 1820, Turner had had an opportunity 
 (for he had been to the Superga’ the year before) of using his 
 own impressions. ‘The Nemi may be contrasted, and the con- 
 trast is an interesting one, with J. R. Cozens’ many repre- 
 sentations of the same subject. Cozens, as has been remarked, 
 brought a cold dark northern colouring into his rendering of 
 the scene, while in Turner’s version the scene is all aglow 
 with sunlight. 
 
 From a less material point of view we may recall Mr. 
 Ruskin’s enthusiasm for the seven water-colours which were 
 once in his own possession, five of which figured in Agnew’s 
 Catalogue of 1913.” 
 
 He describes them (p. 22) as ‘‘ a series which expresses the 
 mind of Turner in its consummate power, but not yet in its 
 widest range. Ordering to himself still the same limits in 
 method and aim, he reaches under these conditions the summit 
 of excellence, and of all these drawings there is but one 
 
 ’ Finberg, Inv., p. 508—sketchbook CLXXIV, 36. 
 
 * “* Notes by John Ruskin on his Water-colours by J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,”’ 
 Nos. 12-18. The two of which we have spoken were among them, and also Nos. 
 7, 8, 25, 58, 62, of the Hakewill series. 
 
 7 
 
criticism possible—they ‘ cannot be better done.’ ”’ 
 
 Let us now, however, pass to the more immediate subject 
 of our study—a selection from the ‘‘ Visions of Rome ’’ that 
 Turner acquired at first hand. 
 
 III 
 TURNER’S VISITS TO ROME 
 
 Turner’s first visit to Rome in 1819 was due to Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence’s entreaties to their common friends in the summer 
 of that year (cf. the letter to Lysons, quoted in Williams’ “‘ Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence,”’ II, 161, and that to Joseph Farington, 
 ibid, 190). But Lawrence, who himself was receiving every 
 honour imaginable, had little or no time for Turner. ‘‘ The 
 President’s Letters,’’ says Mr. Bell, ‘‘ are almost invariably 
 filled with the record either of his own artistic triumphs, or of 
 the relaxation which he permitted himself occasionally to take 
 in the company of very great people. Indeed, so much is this 
 the case that having induced Turner to come to Rome, he 
 entirely neglected to mention his presence there. The land- 
 scape painter would, to be sure, have found himself sufficiently 
 ill at ease in the society of the Metternichs in real life, and 
 perhaps Lawrence thought it better to keep him out of it even 
 on paper. Fortunately, however, he has noted in another 
 letter the period of Turner’s departure.’”’ 
 
 Lawrence did not himself leave Rome till the 22nd of 
 December, 1819 (Williams, IJ, 221). At what date Turner left 
 England, or when he reached Rome, is uncertain. He did not 
 stay any length of time in Paris (CLXXIII).” 
 
 He crossed the Mont Cenis, thence went to Turin, Como, 
 Lago Maggiore, Milan, Venice (CLXXIV, CLXXV), thence 
 to Bologna, Rimini, and Ancona (CLXXVI). Thence he went 
 on by Loreto, Macerata, Foligno, and Terni (from which he 
 visited Piediluco), Narni, and Cuivita Castellana to Rome 
 
 (CLXXVID). | 
 * “© Genius of Turner,’’ E. vii. The letter is quoted by Williams, II, 235 
 (February, 19, 1820, from Cremona). ‘‘ By this time Mr. Turner is returned to 
 
 YOu. (eh. Pe 220), 
 1° The references here as elsewhere are to Mr. Finberg’s numbering in his 
 valuable Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest. 
 
 8 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 STONE PINES ON MONTE MARIO—PENCIL. 
 
 (CLA AALS 11 
 
 PLATE 3: 
 
 National Gallery, No, 263) 
 
 
 
 
 

 
The guide-book which served Turner on the journey is still 
 preserved among the sketchbooks (No. CCCLXVII), inasmuch 
 as 1t contains a number of slight pencil notes and sketches. 
 Its title is as follows :— 
 
 “Itinerary of Italy; or Traveller’s Guide,” by M. 
 Reichard, with three large and correct Maps, London : Printed 
 for Samuel Leigh, 18 Strand, MDCCCXVIII. I have not 
 been able to consult a copy of this work in Rome.” No. 
 CCCLXVIII B, too, is a sheet of writing, containing informa- 
 tion about Florence and Parma, in what Mr. Finberg believes 
 to be Hakewill’s handwriting. I may remark in regard to the 
 latter place that ‘‘ Antiquities found in the buried ancient town 
 of Villcia ’’ should undoubtedly be “‘ Veleia.”’ 
 
 He also benefited by Hakewill’s advice: indeed the 
 “Route to Rome ’”’ Sketchbook (CLXXI) is in effect a MS. 
 guide-book, written specially for Turner’s benefit by Hakewill 
 with all sorts of hints as to what should be seen in each place, 
 prices to be paid, etc., with notes as to distances added by 
 Turner at the beginning, and a few sketches also added by him. 
 The notes affecting Rome are as follows: (I have corrected 
 obvious errors in spelling) (p. 13 ff.) ‘‘ Take some mode of 
 travelling gently to Rome (from Florence) as Perugia, Spoleto, 
 Terni, Narni, Civita Castellana should all be stopped at. 
 
 ‘Go to Dee’s, corner of the Piazza di Spagna and the Via 
 della Croce and buy for me 4 Cameos on shells (unmounted). 
 Subjects for a necklace. Anda Mosaic, a little larger, for a 
 locket, a large butterfly or a basket of flowers. Buy for mea 
 head of the Pope in imitation of a gem, and the paste of it to 
 take impressions from—probably 2/6 will purchase both. 
 
 ‘“Go to Franz’s” in the Strada Condotti—Table d’Héte 
 good.’ (It is also mentioned as the best in Rome, ‘ where the 
 price, previous to the late great influx of the English, was four 
 Roman Pauls; at present it is six’ (Coxe, ‘ Picture of Italy,’ 
 187), and in several other guide-books of the period). ‘‘ Get the 
 English guide-book. I forget the name—lI wish you could get 
 
 1 T find that a French edition of it was published at Weimar in 1825 (Blanc, 
 Bibliographie Italico-Frangaise, I, 905). 
 
 13 Franz Roesler, a Swiss. The family, under the name of Roesler Franz, still 
 lives in Rome. 
 
 9 
 
our Servant Lorenzo. Enquire of Mr. Chiavari, the Banker 
 for him—or of Mr. Joseph Modetti, on the Corso near the Piazza 
 Colonna, on the right going down the street. 
 
 Hire a couple of horses and a guide and make one tour to 
 Albano, Marino, Grotta Ferrata, Frascati and Tivoli and back 
 to Rome. There is a good map of the environs of Rome. 
 
 “‘Cameriere, not laquais de place. Usual pay of a 
 Cameriere 9 scudi per month. 
 Monaldini, in the Piazza di Spagna. 
 
 Vasi in the Strada Babuino. 
 
 See Camuccini’s pictures and notice a small crucifixion by 
 Vandyke.”’ 
 
 Turner had also prepared himself for the journey by 
 making small pen and ink sketches from the ‘‘ Select Views 
 in Italy,’’ published by John Smith, William Byrne, and John 
 Emes in 1792-6 (No. CLXXII). Of this work there are two 
 editions ; the first is in oblong folio and corresponds to the above 
 description, except that the second book, published in 1796, 
 was printed, not by T. Chapman, but by W. Bulmer & Co. , 
 and that J. Edwards’ name has taken the place of that of 
 J. Emes at the bottom of the title page. The second edition is 
 in quarto: the division into two books has been abandoned : 
 the text and plates are the same, and the text of the title-page 
 (though in different type) is like that of the second volume of 
 the oblong folio edition and bears date 1796. But on the 
 engraved dedication to the Queen, the words ‘“ Italian 
 Scenery ”’ have been inserted at the top, the date has been 
 altered from January 18th, 1792, to January 18th, 1817, and the 
 names of the publishers, J. Smith, W. Byrne, and J. Edwards, 
 have been added to the foot: This was no doubt done in order 
 to give balance to the page. 
 
 It is an interesting commentary on the effects of the French 
 Revolution that the issue of the second edition was obviously 
 delayed until it became once more possible for English 
 travellers to visit the Continent. Indeed, the Rome that 
 Turner saw had but recently returned to Papal government 
 after a taste of French efficiency : and English travellers of the 
 period seem to have been divided between their detestation of 
 Napoleon and their hatred of Papal rule—and in Rome itself, 
 
 10 
 
 Booksellers, ete. 
 
PLATE 4 
 ROME FROM MONTE MARIO 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 33: National Gallery, No. 592) 
 
 The point of view is a little lower down the 
 southern slopes of Monte Mario. We see the 
 Via di Porta Angelica in the centre of the 
 picture, running to the gate of that name in the 
 wall of Pius IV, close under the Belvedere of 
 the Vatican: this has from this point almost 
 the appearance of a castle, as it had when first 
 erected. To the right, beyond the dome of 
 S. Peter’s, is the wall of Leo IV surrounding 
 the Vatican gardens. To the left, Castel S. 
 Angelo, with the beginning of the corridor 
 leading to the Vatican, is the only prominent 
 object in the view of the city. 
 

 

 
 
 

 
PLATE 5 
 ROME FROM THE GARDENS OF THE 
 VILLA LANTE 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 34: National Gallery, No. 593) 
 
 The description is not exact, the Villa Lante 
 being a good deal higher up and just out of the 
 picture on the right. The real point of view is 
 the Villa Barberini above the church of S. 
 Spirito in Sassia, the tower of which is in the 
 left foreground. It is the same point from 
 which Plates 8 and 9 are taken (the latter in a 
 reverse direction), and a somewhat unusual one 
 too. This is clear from the fact that we are 
 looking straight at the point of the bend of the 
 Tiber, just above S. Giovanni del’ Fiorentini, 
 which is seen on the bank. We thus see the 
 Ponte S. Angelo and Ponte Sisto at the same 
 moment. The dome of the hospital of S. 
 Spirito seen in front of Castel S. Angelo. For 
 the rest the representation of the domes and 
 towers of the city is remarkable for its beauty 
 and clearness. 
 

 
* 
 
 vf 
 
 
 
where the character of the Government and the administration 
 had certainly been better under the French, the latter feeling 
 seems to prevail over the former; though they do full justice 
 to the dignity and constancy shown by Pope Pius VII under 
 Napoleon’s oppressive severity, by means of which he obtained 
 the sympathy of most of his contemporaries. Personally, 
 indeed, the Pope was an exception to the general rule—he is 
 called even by R. M. Johnston (‘‘ The Roman Theocracy and 
 the Republic,’’ 26), ‘‘a ruler of great qualities, fit to rank in 
 the small and select company of the great Popes. He retrieved 
 the damaged moral position of the Catholic Church, and, carried 
 on the crest of the wave of reaction that swept Europe, 
 re-established the temporal power on an apparently safe and 
 durable basis.”’ 
 
 If we read a travel book of a few years before—the recently 
 exhumed ‘“ Journal of John Mayne during a Tour on the 
 Continent upon its re-opening after the Fall of Napoleon, 1814, 
 edited by his grandson John Mayne Colles’ (London, 1909), 
 we find a passage (p. 164) that may illustrate what has gone 
 before. ‘‘ Our first visit this morning was to Torlonia’s bank 
 (Giovanni Raimondo Torlonia—1754-1829—was a banker of 
 humble birth). His stepson, Mr. Chiaveri, speaks English 
 reasonably well. He was extremely polite, offered us any 
 money we might want before the arrival of our letters, and, on 
 our expressing our thanks, said that it was his business to be 
 useful, and that Englishmen deserved it. (Later on—pp. 172, 
 173, 183, 193 sq.—his ability is commented on, although it is 
 also noted that ‘this gentleman, a young man, the son of a 
 duke, just come from waiting upon the Princess of Wales, had 
 a beard of at least two days’ growth, though in other respects 
 he was clean and well dressed.’) This Torlonia is a great 
 personage here; he made a prodigious fortune by risking every- 
 thing with the French, and having lately purchased large 
 estates with a dukedom attached, he is now the Duke of 
 Bracciano. (His boundless hospitality and attention to British 
 visitors are also praised by Lady Morgan—‘ Italy,’ II, 452). 
 At Mr. Vasi’s we purchased his guide-book, which is considered 
 the best of its kind.’’ It bears the title of Itimerario Istruttivo 
 di Roma antica e moderna e sue Vicinanze, and is also recom- 
 
 1] 
 
mended by Coxe (‘‘ Picture of Italy,”’ ed. II, p. 192). Mariano 
 Vasi, its author and publisher, was the son of Giuseppe Vasi, 
 the Sicilian engraver, a contemporary of Piranesi to whom 
 however he is far inferior. 
 
 Mayne notes more than once the kindness and considera- 
 tion with which the English were treated, though it was not 
 always very well repaid. He relates how at Prince Massimo’s 
 (p. 219) the English began to pour in about ten o’clock; ‘‘ the 
 ladies all gathered. themselves into a group in the middle of the 
 room, with their knees close together, and the gentlemen stood, 
 leaning on the backs of their chairs.. This they call mixing in 
 foreign society.’’ And again, ‘‘ at Torlonia’s there was quite 
 a crowd of English. About eleven o’clock they all, with one 
 accord, took leave at the same moment. Mr. Chiaveri after- 
 wards thanked me and another gentleman for not deserting with 
 the rest of our countrymen, and said that he really did think, 
 for a moment, that the house was in flames when they all fled 
 with such precipitation ’’ (p. 245). 
 
 Mayne (p. 279) also visited Camuccini’s pictures. ‘‘ He 
 seems,’’ he remarks, ‘‘ by universal suffrage, to be ranked as 
 the first historical painter now in Italy. Wesaw a great many 
 paintings—both original works and copies of Raffaelle’s made 
 for his own improvement.”’ ‘‘ Camuccini was,’’ says Noack,” 
 ‘* the most important representative of academic classicism and 
 the most successful of the followers of Mengsin Rome . . . for 
 nearly half a century (1802-1842) he was the undisputed dictator 
 in Roman painting ’’—which to our modern taste is but faint 
 praise. One of his best known works is the Judgment of Paris 
 in the fourth room of the upper floor of the Villa Borghese. 
 Turner’s opinion of him is not recorded, but one may doubt if 
 it would have been favourable. 
 
 Two addresses noted by Turner (CLXXX, p. 81a), are 
 “Capt. Graham, 12, Piazza Mignanelli,’’ and ‘“‘ Thomas L. 
 Donaldson, 46, Via Gregoriana, Trinita de Monti.”’ The former 
 may be identified with the N. G. Graham, Esq., to whom the 
 proprietors of Coxe’s ‘‘ Pictures of Italy ’’ in the Preface to the 
 second edition of 1818, record their obligations for information 
 received from observations made in the course of his tour in 
 
 13 In Thieme-Becker. Allgemeines Lexikon, V, 482. 
 
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Italy during the year 1817: or else with George Farquhar 
 Graham, who, soon after 1816, visited France and Italy in 
 pursuit of musical knowledge (D.N.B., viii, 315, the 21 vol. 
 edition). Thomas Donaldson, then a young man of twenty- 
 four, who had received the Royal Academy silver medal in 
 architecture in 1817, was measuring and drawing the principal 
 buildings in Italy, and subsequently proceeded to Greece. He 
 was elected a member of the Academy of St. Luke in 1822. 
 After his return to England he practised as an architect, and 
 erected various buildings, including Hope House in Piccadilly, 
 now the Junior Athenzeum Club. He was also the author of 
 a large work on ‘‘ Pompeii’’ and of ‘‘ Architectura Numis- 
 matica, or Architectural Medals of Classical Antiquity.’’ He 
 died in 1885, at the age of ninety. Otherwise we have no trace 
 of Turner’s having gone into society, with or without 
 Lawrence’s help, nor is it likely from what we know of him. 
 He is more likely to have spent his evenings in colouring up 
 some of his drawings. ‘ 
 
 Dates are rare in the records of his stay. The ‘‘ Albano, 
 Nemi, Rome ”’ Sketchbook (CLXXXII) is dated November 30, 
 1819, on one of the covers, and it is clear from dates on some 
 of the leaves of this sketchbook that Turner was in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Castel Gandolfo and the Lake of Albano from 
 November g to 11 at least (pp. 17, 18, 26). He must have gone 
 on straight to Naples, as the ‘‘ Castel Gandolfo to Naples ”’ 
 Sketchbook (CLX XXIV) shows, for John Soane, Junior’s letter 
 of the 15th November from there refers to him as “in the 
 neighbourhood ’’; and he certainly returned to Rome by the 
 same route (Terracina and Gaeta), which was indeed by far the 
 most usual. He seems, despite Hakewill’s advice, to have 
 made a separate excursion to Tivoli, where, like Hakewill, he 
 doubtless stayed at the Locanda della Sibilla—still in existence. 
 In the ‘‘ St. Peter’s ’? Sketchbook (CLXXXVIII) we find the 
 date ‘‘ December 2, 1819, Roma,’ on the inside of one of 
 the covers. | 
 
 On the 20th December Soane writes (again from Naples) 
 that he was already on his way home. We have no details of 
 the first part of his journey; but a drawing at Farnley Hall 
 
 13 
 
gives, as Mr. C. F. Bell notes,“ ‘‘ a precise record of the date 
 (January 15, 1820), of his crossing Mont Cenis on his way 
 home.’’ We have another date (24th January) written under a 
 sketch probably made at Lanslebourg, on the north side of the 
 pass, in the “‘ Return from Italy ’’ Sketchbook (CXCII, p. 17), 
 which must refer to the year 1820—unless the whole book were 
 transferred to 1829, which is improbable. He did not linger 
 long in France; for on the 12th February, 1820, we find him 
 dining at Grosvenor Place, London, with his friends the 
 Fawkeses.” 
 
 Much light is thrown on Turner’s method of work by an 
 interesting letter from John Soane, Junior, to his father, written 
 from Naples on November 15, 1819, to which my attention was 
 called by the late Mr. Walter Spiers, then Curator of the Soane 
 Museum : ‘‘ Turner is in the neighbourhood of Naples making 
 rough pencil sketches to the astonishment of the Fashionables, 
 who wonder of what use these rough draughts (sic) can be— 
 simple souls. At Rome a sucking blade of the brush made 
 request of going out with pig Turner to colour—he grunted for 
 answer that it would take up too much time to colour in the 
 open air: he would make 15 or 16 pencil sketches to one 
 coloured, and then grunted his way home. ‘To the question 
 how many scudi would be required for ransome money in case 
 a pig was sto(p)ped on his way to this Paradise, 500 scudi being 
 named, he grunted forth a grunt of ‘a large sum.’ In the 
 journey having occasion for a Nap (napoleon) he produced one 
 which had been concealed in a purse that he had within an inner 
 pocket—a pig could not have been ushered into the world with 
 more consequence.”’ 
 
 Turner’s comment on S. Peter’sisa just one.“ ‘* The part 
 by Bernini good in the arrangement of the columns; but, being 
 very large, they convey the idea of greatness away from the 
 facade of the building, which being but one order, tho’ the .. . 
 has in the facia of the panel a capital to carry an entablature 
 without support, and the Dome . . . while in the upper corner, 
 
 14 “©The Genius of Turner,’ E. vii; Exhibited Drawings, p. 170, No. 56. 
 
 18 Finberg, ‘‘ Turner’s Sketches and Drawings,” 91. 
 
 16 Thornbury “‘ Life ’’ (1877), p. 479. Finberg, 531 (CLXXX, 24). The former 
 by the way, is quite wrong in referring the entries at the beginning to Rome. 
 The memoranda obviously relate to Turin. 
 
 14 
 
the most favourable view, the columns are cut by it, and the 
 cupola has no base; so that the dome, when approaching the 
 steps, becomes secondary to the horizontal parts.’’ His 
 remarks on the pictures he saw are also interesting (cf. Finberg 
 Inv., pp. 531, 574), e.g., on the Aurora of Guido, and on the 
 Claudes which he saw in the Palazzo Barberini and in the 
 Palazzo Sciarra. We do sometimes find his mental notes as to 
 colour supplemented by actual memoranda; but it is rare to find 
 so long and interesting a one as that which we may read on the 
 inside of the covers of the ‘‘ Ancona to Rome’”’ Sketchbook 
 (CLXXVII: Finberg, p. 520), ‘“‘ Loreto to Recanata. Colour 
 of the hills Wilson Claude, the olives the light . . . when the 
 sun shone green, the ground reddish green grey and apt to 
 Purple, the sea quite blue, under the Sun a warm vapour, from 
 the Sun Blue relieving (?) the shadow of the Olive trees dark, 
 while the foliage light or the whole when in shadow a quiet 
 grey. Beautiful dark green yet warm, the middle Trees, yet 
 Bluish in parts, the distance; the aqueduct reddish, the fore- 
 ground light grey in shadow.”’ 
 
 No doubt his method of travelling, in which the economical 
 diligence was preferred to the more leisurely private carriage, 
 did not always allow of such delays as he would have wished— 
 as we find on his later tour to have been the case. ‘‘ An amus- 
 ing picture of him at this time (1829-30) is given in a letter from 
 one who met him accidentally in his travels and did not know 
 him. He describes Turner as ‘a good-tempered, funny little 
 elderly gentleman, continuously sketching at the window, and 
 angry at the conductor for not waiting while he took a sketch 
 of a sunrise at Macerata.’ ‘ D—— the fellow! ’ he said, ‘ he 
 has no feeling.’ He speaks only a few words of Italian, about 
 as much of French, which languages he jumbles together most 
 amusingly.”’’ That he was there on his first tour also is clear 
 enough (CLXXI, 7; CLXXVII, 9a, 16a, r9a—22). 
 
 Turner, on his second visit to Italy in 1828 travelled 
 from Paris by Orleans and Lyons to Marseilles (CCXXIX, 
 CCXX%X), thence to Genoa (CCXXXI, CCXXXITIT). From 
 
 uD. N.B., XIX, 1273. The incident must belong to his journey from Rome 
 to Bologna on January 3-6, 1829, and probably occurred on the morning of the 
 5th (Monday). 
 
 15 
 
Genoa he went by the coast to Leghorn and thence to Florence 
 (CCXXXITI); thence to Orvieto, Bolsena and Montefiascone 
 (CCXXXIV), and to Viterbo, Ronciglione and Rome 
 (CCXXXVI). On his return to Rome in 1828 he stayed at 
 12, Piazza Mignanelli, and from there wrote a letter to George 
 Jones, R.A., on October 13, and another to Chantrey, the 
 sculptor, on November 6, both published by Thornbury 
 (‘‘ Life,’’ pp. 100—102). The first gives us but little news of 
 his stay there, except that he asks Jones: ‘‘ If you should be 
 passing Queen Anne Street, just say I am well and in Rome, 
 for I fear young Hakewell (sic) has written to his father of my 
 being unwell.’’ The second has a more interesting passage— 
 ““ even now very little information have I to give you in matters 
 of Art, for I have confined myself to the painting department 
 at Corso; and having finished one, am about the second, and 
 getting on with Lord E’s, which I began the very first touch at 
 Rome; but as the folk here talked that I would show them not, 
 I finished a small three feet four to stop their gabbling : so now 
 to business.’”’ 
 
 C(osmo) M(onkhouse) conjectures that the first may be the 
 Jessica (D.N.B. XIX, 1273), and his opinion is supported by 
 Bell (“ Exhibited Works of Turner,” p. 113, No. 167), while 
 the small picture is the Orvieto exhibited in 1830 (National 
 Gallery, 511: Bell, op. cit., p. 112, No. 165). 
 
 The National Gallery Catalogue states that the Vision of 
 Medea and the Regulus (National Gallery, 513, 519), Bell, op. 
 cit., p. 115, No. 172, p. 133, No. 207), were painted in Rome in 
 1829 ; but as we shall see, Turner had already left Rome on 
 January 3rd, 1829. What Sir Charles Eastlake actually says 
 (as quoted from Thornbury, I, 221), is: ‘‘ When Turner was 
 in Rome in 1828-29, he resided in the same house with me 
 (12, Piazza Mignanelli. .. ). He painted there the View of 
 Orvieto, the Regulus and the Medea. These pictures were 
 exhibited in Rome in some rooms which Turner subsequently 
 occupied at the Quattro Fontane. The foreign artists who 
 went to see them could make nothing of them. . . .” East- 
 lake was in Rome from 1816-1830 almost continuously. 
 
 Turner then proceeds to tell Chantrey of the sculptors then 
 at workin Rome. ‘“‘ Gott’s Studioisfull. Wyatt and Rennie, 
 
 16 
 

 
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Ewing, Buxton, all employed. Gibson has two groups in 
 hand, Venus and Cupid and the Rape of Hylas, etc.”’ 
 
 An interesting passage follows in Thornbury: ‘‘ Mr. 
 Rippingille, who instituted enquiries in Rome as to the 
 appreciation of Turner, writes.” . . . ‘‘In a subsequent 
 portion of his life Turner was in Rome, and there exhibited 
 pictures which (no disgrace, I must say), won him no credit. 
 At the time he was in the Eternal City, an English tradesman 
 was living there who made a great to do, and sold English 
 mustard ; and when his namesake came and exposed his wares, 
 the Romans, who are a peculiar class of jokers, proclaimed that 
 one sold mustard and the other painted it. Some intelligent 
 Romans, with whom I talked, wondered that the English could 
 be so devoid of taste as to admire and tolerate such extravagant 
 productions.”’ 
 
 If Camuccini’s frigid classical works were the rage, this 
 judgment is by no means surprising. And Turner himself 
 returned the compliment : ‘‘I never heard him speak highly 
 of modern pictures,’’ said Mr. Trimmer (Thornbury, p. 126), 
 “‘ and he told me once that he considered the art at Rome at the 
 lowest ebb.’”? Turner also wrote a letter hence to Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence, in December, whom he thanked for giving his vote 
 to Me Turner at the Academy election (D.N.B., XIX, 
 
 1273): 
 He did practically no sketching in Rome on this occasion, 
 unless we may attribute to this visit a number of drawings 
 which are not in the National Gallery. The studies for the 
 vignette illustrations to Rogers’ ‘‘ Italy ’’ do not necessarily 
 fall into this category. Highly praised as they are by Thorn- 
 bury (p. 112) and Ruskin, it is their artistic rather than their 
 topographical merits which are in question; and the subjects 
 are indeed common ones enough. There are only a few that 
 have todo with Rome. They areas follows— CCLXXX : 158 
 (Rome—Rogers’ “‘ Italy,” p. 144) ; 160 (St. Peter’s and Castel S. 
 Angelo, p. 165); 161 (Campagna, p. 162); 166 (T1volt, p. 173); 
 and perhaps 144 (Italian Composition, p. 175)." In the 
 National collection we find only one tiny notebook 
 (CCXXXVII) with a few pencil sketches and memoranda 
 
 18 This last identification is doubtful. 
 
 17 
 
relative to Rome—and a great many other places as well. 
 
 With regard to Turner’s return to England, we have some 
 important information in the entries in ink on the inside of one 
 of the covers of the ‘‘ Rome, Turin and Milan ’’ sketchbook 
 (CCXXXV). Here we read: “Left Rome Saturday 8 
 E(vening) Jan(uar)y 3 (the year is omitted, but it must be 
 1829).". Bologna Tuesday (6th). Left—Friday (9th) 12 
 o'clock. Milan Wednesday (14th) ditto. Snow all the way.”’ 
 There follow some entries in pencil : 
 
 *“ Wed—8—for Turin 
 
 Monday 
 
 Tuesday—Suza 
 
 Wed— 
 
 Saturday—Lyons.”’ 
 If we work these last entries out as indications of what actually 
 happened we should find that Turner, even if he started at 
 8 p.m. for Turin on the day of his arrival at Milan, could not 
 have reached Lyons before Saturday the 24th. But, as a fact, 
 we must consider them to be merely a forecast, which was more 
 than realised. Turner must have got on rather faster than he 
 expected, and reached the Mont Tarare, which lies north of the 
 town of Tarare, 28 miles W.N.W. of Lyons, by Thursday the 
 22nd. From an incident which occurred on the journey over 
 this lofty summit, over 3,000 feet above sea level, Turner made 
 a water-colour bearing the following legend : ce Messieurs les 
 voyageurs on their return from Italy (par la diligence) in a 
 snowdrift upon Mount Tarrar (sic) 22nd of January, 1829.” 
 (Bell “‘ Exhibited Works,”’ p. 53, No. 80). This was in the 
 possession of Messrs. Agnew i in 1899." As to the rest of the 
 journey, we have no information. 
 
 A last visit to Rome in 1839 is believed to have produced 
 the Arch of Constantine (Tate Gallery, 2066) and Tivol (Tate 
 Gallery, 2067)—see the catalogue—though there is no evidence 
 in the sketchbooks (CCCX sqq.) that he ever got beyond 
 Verona, Padova, and Venice; cf. Finberg ‘‘ Inventory,” p. 
 
 ** He must have gone by Macerata: see the letter quoted on page 15: so 
 that he doubtless followed the route by which he had come to Rome in 1819, but 
 in the reverse direction. 
 
 ** The journey over the mountain is described by Brockedon, ‘‘ Road Book to 
 Italy,’’ 53. 
 
 18 
 
PLATE II 
 NYMPHA:UM OF ALEXANDER 
 SEVERUS 
 (CLXXXIX, 35: National Gallery, No. 594) 
 In the left foreground is the Nympheum, 
 rightly so named, though often called (without 
 any real reason) the Temple of Minerva 
 Medica. To whom it belonged is another 
 question—perhaps to the Licinii, a family of 
 which the emperor Gallienus was a member. 
 On the right is a long line of arches, belonging 
 to the internal gallery of the Aurelian wall, but 
 misinterpreted as an aqueduct: and beyond is 
 the Porta S. Lorenzo. The whole of this once 
 desolate scene is now a mass of railway lines and 
 modern streets. 
 

 
que, ae 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 ; 
 Ss a 
 a 
 
 
 
PLATE 12 
 THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 36: National Gallery, No. 595) 
 
 This view is the reverse of the last, being 
 taken from outside the Aurelian wall from a 
 point not very far from the church of S. 
 Lorenzo. The gate of that name is on the 
 extreme right, and the wall extends all along 
 the middle distance; behind it we see the 
 Nympheum, and to the left of it the line of 
 arches which have given their name to the 
 picture. They are, however, but a misinter- 
 pretation of the gallery in the upper part of the 
 Aurelian wall, between the towers. Here 
 again the foreground is now a densely populated 
 district. 
 
3 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
PLATE 13 
 CAMPAGNA: SNOWY APENNINES IN 
 DISTANCE 
 
 (CLXXXVII, 42: National Gallery, No. 338) 
 
 The view is taken from a point outside Porta 
 S. Lorenzo. The ‘‘ snowy Apennines ’’ in the 
 centre are the triple peaks of the Monte Velino 
 above Avezzano and the Fucine Lake, some 
 sixty miles away. To the left is Monte 
 Gennaro, and to the extreme left the 
 Monte Terminillo above Rieti, rising, like 
 Monte Velino, to some 8,000 feet above the sea. 
 
 To the right of the gap below the Monte 
 Velino (through which the Anio forces its way 
 into the plain, past Tivoli, which is seen below) 
 are some of the mountains above Subiaco; and 
 the rocky cock’s comb of Guadagnolo closes 
 the view on the right. Between us and the hills 
 is the desolate Campagna, which has undergone 
 such a change in recent years as to be almost 
 unrecognisable, so much has cultivation spread 
 over it. 
 

 

 
 
 
 
 

 
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1,029, note ** Mr. C. Mallord W. Turner has in his possession 
 a letter from a gentleman signing himself ‘E. H.,’ who had 
 accompanied Turner down the Rhine on his way to Venice. 
 The letter is written from Rome, and dated ‘ 24th August, 
 1840,’ and speaks of meeting Turner on the way back. ‘ EK. H.’ 
 had parted company with Turner at Bregenz, on the Boden 
 See, ‘EH. H.’ and his wife going through the Via Mala to the 
 Splugen, Turner bound for Venice, via Innsbruck and 
 Landeck. Perhaps this sketchbook (CCCXX) may belong to 
 this very journey. 
 
 What was the effect of his first visit to Rome and Southern 
 
 Italy upon his art as a whole? C(osmo) M(onkhouse) in the 
 D.N.B. (XIX, 1272, 1273), refers to the classical pictures as 
 “glorious ’’ and ‘‘ splendid ’’ dreams of Italy; but others have 
 not shared his opinion : and Finberg’s (“ Turner’s Sketches 
 and Drawings,’ 93) admiration for the drawings is tempered 
 by the consideration that the best that could be made of these 
 wonderful sketches was two or three charming water-colours 
 for Mr. Fawkes, a weak and empty Forum Romanum for Mr. 
 Soane’s Museum, and a large Bay of Baiae as to which he 
 quotes Ruskin’s opinion, which we shall give immediately. . 
 “ If the doctrine of Naturalism,’’ he goes on to say, “ possessed 
 the universal validity itis assumed to possess, the pictures based 
 upon the truest and most elaborate drawings Turner ever made 
 from nature—and that, too, of the most beautiful and the most 
 historically interesting scenery in the world—should have been 
 the best he had so far produced. They are admittedly among 
 the worst ’’; and again (‘‘ Water-colours of J. M. W. Turner,” 
 39) : “‘ We must remember that, in spite of all their attractive- 
 ness, Turner found these drawings worse than useless for his 
 general artistic purposes, and that only bad and foolish pictures 
 came from them; and the more carefully we study the matter 
 the more clearly do we see that nothing but bad and foolish 
 pictures could come from work in which the spirit of curiosity 
 _ and of cold and accurate observation is predominant. ”’ 
 
 Even Ruskin (‘‘ Modern Painters,” i, 128, ed. 1888), is con- 
 strained to admit the same : “‘ The effect of Italy upon his mind 
 is very puzzling. On the one hand it gave him the solemnity 
 and power which are manifested in the historical compositions 
 
 19 
 
of the Liber Studiorum—on the other, he never seems to have 
 entered thoroughly into the spirit of Italy, and the materials he 
 obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced into 
 his larger compositions. Of these there are very few at all 
 worthy of him... of the larger compositions which have 
 much of Italy in them, the greater part are overwhelmed with 
 quantity, and deficient in emotion. . . . The Caligula’s 
 Bridge, Temple of Jupiter, Departure of Regulus, Ancient 
 Italy, Cicero’s Villa, and such others, come from whose hand 
 they may, I class under the general head of ‘ nonsense pictures.’ 
 There never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these 
 preposterous accumulations, and where the artist’s feeling fails, 
 his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of Turner’s 
 colour are found in pictures of this class. . . . Neither in his 
 actual views of Italy has Turner ever caught her true spirit, 
 except in the little vignettes to Rogers’s Poems. . . . None of 
 his large pictures at all equal them; the Bay of Baiae is 
 encumbered with material, it contains ten times as much as is 
 necessary to a good picture, and yet is so crude in colour as to 
 look unfinished. ‘The Palestrina is full of raw white, and has 
 a look of Hampton Court about its long avenue; the Modern 
 Italy is purely English in its near foliage; it is composed from 
 Tivoli material, enriched and arranged most dexterously, but 
 it has the look of a rich arrangement, and not the virtue of the 
 real thing. The early Tivoli, a large drawing taken from 
 below the falls, was as little true, and still less fortunate, the 
 trees there being altogether affected and artificial. . . . The 
 chief reason of these failures I imagine to be the effort of the 
 artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes 
 eminently pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, 
 and to force the freedom and breadth of line which he learnt to 
 love on English downs and Highland moors, out of a country 
 dotted by campaniles and square convents, bristled with 
 cypresses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and down 
 by steps.” 
 
 20 
 
IV 
 TURNER’S VISIONS OF ROME 
 
 Let us turn now to the more detailed consideration of the 
 sketches and drawings which we have selected for illustrations 
 from his vast store. There are only twenty-eight of them; but 
 they give an adequate idea of the beauty of the rest. The 
 selection has, it need hardly be said, not been easy, especially 
 among the pencil drawings, which so greatly outnumber the 
 water-colours. 
 
 Among those we have selected are views of all parts of 
 Rome: and, as the order of the drawings in the sketch- 
 books is in a good many cases purely fortuitous (for the sketch- 
 books were broken up by Mr. Ruskin without any note of the 
 order of the leaves having been taken) it may be as well to adopt 
 a topographical arrangement, which will have the advantage 
 of allowing us to consider drawings of the same subject together. 
 The greater part even of Turner’s water-colours of Rome were 
 originally made in pencil (more rarely in pen) and coloured 
 afterwards; only our Plates, Nos. 2, 6, 8, I1, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 
 are pure water-colour. The greater part of them occur in 
 CLXXXIX (from which the bulk of our reproductions are 
 taken), one of the large sketchbooks in which the leaves 
 (14% by g inches) were all prepared on one side with a wash 
 of grey. From CLXXXVII, which is even larger (16 by 10 1/16 
 inches) but in part devoted to Naples and its environs, we have 
 chosen five, three water-colours and two monochromes. 
 CLXXXIITI, the ‘* Tivoli ’’ Sketchbook, is also on the large side 
 (10 by 7 15/16 inches), while CXC, from which an isolated 
 water-colour (almost the only one in the book) has been taken, 
 measures 5 3/16 by 10 1/8 inches. The others he used are a 
 good deal smaller. 
 
 We begin, then, with a view looking out to the north- 
 east from the Villa Madama (Plate 1), a country house, begun 
 by Raphael for Pope Clement VII while yet a Cardinal, which 
 later was owned by Margaret of Parma, daughter of Charles V, 
 from whom it takes its name. Turner gives us a masterly 
 rendering of the snow-tipped Apennines in the distance, with 
 the expanse of the Campagna in the foreground. Below us 1s 
 
 21 
 
the noble sweep of the Tiber, with the picturesque Ponte Molle 
 on the left, and the flat peninsula, then an area of gardens and 
 vineyards traversed only by the straight Via Flaminia with a 
 few houses along it, but now in large measure a part of the great 
 and ever-growing city. In the middle distance a few skilful 
 touches suggest the innumerable undulations and low hills of 
 this part of the Campagna, then a desolate waste, but in recent 
 years dotted with large and not very picturesque farmhouses. 
 
 The next view, entitled Gardens outside Rome (Plate 2), 
 is taken from the southern spur of Monte Mario, crowned by 
 the Villa Mellini, to the garden of which the balustrade must 
 belong. This is indicated by the presence of the dome of 
 S. Peter’s and of the northern part of the city, while the eleva- 
 tion shows that we are on or near the summit of the hill. The 
 point of view was a favourite one with artists. A drawing by 
 Jacob Moore in the British Museum is reproduced in “ Forty 
 Drawings from Roman Scenes by British artists ’’ (London, 
 TOLL) hie AL. 
 
 Two more views (Plates 3 and 4) are taken from two points 
 on the same spur, each a little further down the hill than the 
 last. We are still looking towards S. Peter’s and S. Pietro in 
 Montorio, on the edge of the Janiculum. In Plate 4 the Via di 
 Porta Angelica is clearly seen running across the Prati di 
 Castello (the meadows—and gardens—dominated by Castel S. 
 Angelo), only of recent years covered with houses, and the walls 
 of Leo IV surrounding the Vatican gardens are clearly seen, 
 while in the other view they are hidden by trees. For the rest, 
 there is little difference except in the treatment. In Plate 4 
 colouring has barely been begun, while in Plate 3 it has not 
 been attempted. 
 
 Let us cross for a moment to the left bank of the Tiber, 
 and, from a little higher up, pass to the Ponte Salario over the 
 Anio with its view over the Campagna to the north (Plate 6). 
 The bridge with its picturesque tower (resembling that of the 
 Ponte Nomentano, which still exists), was blown up in 1867, 
 so that the view hasan interest of itsown. To the leftisa lofty 
 watch-tower surmounting an ancient tomb : and further again 
 we see the bends of the Anio, its junction with the Tiber, and 
 the hill of Antemnz on the extreme left. The absolute desola- 
 
 22 
 
PLATE 18 
 THE COLOSSEUM 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 37: National Gallery, No. 596) 
 
 This beautiful view of the Flavian amphi- 
 theatre from below the Temple of Venus and 
 Rome is familiar to every visitor. The great 
 buttress which saves the outer ring of arches 
 from further collapse had not yet been erected 
 by Pius IX at the point where they abruptly 
 stop, and from the esthetic point of view, this 
 is certainly a gain. The house on the extreme 
 left has given place to the bank from which 
 now rise the scanty remains of the entrance 
 colonnade of the Baths of Titus. 
 

 

 
 
 

 
PLATE 19 
 
 ARCHES OF CONSTANTINE AND TITUS 
 (CLXXXIX, 40: National Gallery, No. 599) 
 
 The scene is again familiar, and sufficiently 
 explained by its title. We see the Temple of 
 Venus and Rome on the right, the Meta Sudans 
 in the foreground, and behind it the Arch of 
 Titus not yet restored by Valadier, and a lofty 
 tower to the left of it, which has the interest of 
 having once contained the archives of the 
 Roman Church, whence came its name, the 
 Turris Cartularia. It was demolished only ten 
 years after Turner drew it, so that his record is 
 not without importance. 
 
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PLATE 20 
 CHURCH OF SS. GIOVANNI E PAOLO 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 39: National Gallery, No. 598) 
 
 The church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, with its 
 picturesque apse and campanile, occupies the 
 right centre of the picture, and, by good 
 fortune, as yet lacks the ‘‘ conspicuous dome ”’ 
 as Baedeker calls it, which was added over the 
 chapel of S. John by Cardinal Howard, the 
 titular, in Pius [X’s reign. To the right are 
 the enormous statues on the main facade of 
 the Lateran, and the arches of the aqueduct 
 which Nero built to carry water to the Palatine 
 (from which this view is taken). To the left 
 are the mighty snow mountains above the Liris 
 valley, and the hills near Palestrina; and at the 
 edge of the picture, the massive apse of the 
 church of SS. Quattro Coronati. 
 

 

 

 
PLATE 21 
 THE ALBAN MOUNT 
 
 (CLXXXIX, 8: National Gallery, No. 260) 
 
 A view looking south-east from the Palatine. 
 In the foreground is the district now occupied 
 by the so-called “‘ Passeggiata Archeologica,”’ 
 or Archeological Park, the formation of which 
 in 1907-14 completely altered the aspect of this 
 part of Rome, which is now traversed by a 
 wide avenue. On the right is the fortified 
 monastery of S. Balbina on the Aventine: then 
 come the Baths of Caracalla, with the Porta S. 
 Sebastiano, which spans the Appian Way in the 
 distance. Then we see the towers of the 
 churches of S. Sisto and §. Giovanni a Porta 
 Latina: while on the extreme left are the pines 
 of the Villa Mattei. In the background are 
 the Alban Hills. 
 

 

 

 
tion of the Campagna—now undergoing a complete trans- 
 formation—is well shown in this view. 
 
 We may next admire our artist’s skilful delineation of the 
 Piazza del Popolo (Plate 7), which was then the first intro- 
 duction of travellers to the Eternal City. After crossing the 
 Ponte Molle, they passed for two miles along the narrow Via 
 Flaminia, and reached the Porta del Popolo. ‘There this fine 
 Piazza burst upon their view, and most of those who have 
 recorded their impressions on entering the city have been 
 conscious of the grandeur of the entrance gate and the 
 splendour of the Piazza. ‘‘ Shall I ever forget,’’ writes Beck- 
 ford, ‘‘ the sensations I experienced when I entered an avenue 
 between terraces and ornamented gates of villas (heu ! quantum 
 mutatus ab illo!) which leads to the Porta del Popolo, and 
 beheld the square, the domes, the obelisk, the long perspective 
 of streets and palaces opening beyond, all glowing with the 
 vivid red of sunset! ’’ ‘The Piazza has to some extent changed 
 since Turner’s time: for it is clear from this drawing that the 
 completion of Valadier’s scheme for its remodelling must be 
 placed not earlier than his day,” and, indeed, as contemporary 
 guide-books show, occurred in 1827-28. For the rest there has 
 been comparatively little alteration: the twin churches of 
 S. Maria di Monte Santo and S. Maria dei Miracoli at the 
 entrance to the Corso, and the large church and dome of S. Carlo 
 al Corso are the most prominent among a group of towers and 
 campanili which rise all through this part of Rome. The 
 prominent building on the left, which by 1829 had given way 
 to the Hétel des Iles Britanniques (now the Hétel de Russie), 
 familiar under that name to British travellers of a century ago, 
 was then the Palazzo Lucernari, and was only reconstructed 
 with the rest of the Piazza a few years after Turner’s visit. 
 His is one of the last records of a building which has now dis- 
 appeared, and about which but little seems to be known. 
 
 71 See the article on ‘‘ The Piazza del Popolo,” by T. Ashby and S. R. Pierce, 
 in ‘‘ Town Planning Review,’’ XI, 2 (December, 1924), 75-96, and especially 
 page go. The dating of Hakewill’s drawing for his engraving to 1800 there 
 proposed is impossible: but Turner’s drawing shows that some progress had been 
 made with the hemicycle below the Pincio; though the old fountain is still in 
 
 position near the obelisk, and the houses on the west side of the Piazza have not 
 been touched. 
 
 23 
 
Plate 8 takes us back to the right bank of the Tiber, and 
 shows us the Campanile of S. Spirito in Sassia : behind it is 
 Castel S. Angelo, with the Ponte S. Angelo, leading toit. On 
 the left are the Prati di Castello, then occupied by fields and 
 gardens, but now a mass of streets and houses: while in the 
 background areas always the mountains, with Soracte standing 
 alone on the left, and Monte Mario, so often our viewpoint, on 
 the edge of the picture. The Villa Barberini, above the church 
 of S. Spirito in Sassia, near the Porta S. Spirito, has served as 
 a viewpoint—and a rather unusual one—for this and two more 
 (Plates 5 and 9) of the sketches which we have reproduced, and 
 at least one other which is not here given. Plate 5 (not there- 
 fore from the Villa Lante, as Finberg states), looks straight at 
 the point of the bend of the Tiber just above the church of 
 S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the dome of which rises straight 
 above the river bank. Weare therefore looking upstream on 
 the left to the Ponte S. Angelo, and downstream on the right 
 to the Ponte Sisto ; the little white spot on the latter is the 
 famous “‘occhio,” a round opening through which the river 
 only runs when it is in high flood. 
 
 On the left, as in our Plate 8, but seen in more detail, and 
 not touched with colour—for the sketch is unfinished—is the 
 dignified Campanile of S. Spirito, a work of the time of 
 Sixtus IV, ‘‘ perhaps the noblest tower of the early Renais- 
 sance’’: and to the same period belongs the hospital with its 
 striking octagonal dome, which is seen close by, in front of the 
 Castel S. Angelo. Over the Ponte Sisto are the towers of the 
 Aventine, and, on the extreme right, the church of S. Pietro in 
 Montorio on the Janiculum. Between the extreme points is 
 the low ground (in Roman times the Campus Martius) which 
 the densely crowded medizval city occupied, whereas in 
 classical times this flat plain was outside the enceinte 
 altogether. In the background are the hills of Rome itself, 
 and beyond are the mountains which guard the passage south- 
 ward, and make the site the key to the possession of Italy. 
 
 Plate 9, taken from the garden of the same villa, looks 
 towards S. Peter’s and its colonnades, and the Vatican. The 
 great palace where the Pope resides, the work of Domenico 
 Fontana, towers above the obelisk : and we see right into the 
 
 24 
 
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 TIONGd—aANILVIVd HHL 42 ALV Id 
 
 
 
Cortile di S. Damaso with its loggia. In the immediate fore- 
 ground, on a terrace wall, stands a great Roman earthenware 
 jar (a dolium, once used for the storage of oil or grain) : behind 
 itisa building belonging to the Villa Barberini; and to the left, 
 behind the curve of the colonnade of S. Peter’ s, is the Palazzo 
 Cesi, which in the sixteenth century contained one of the most 
 important collections of classical sculpture in Rome, long ago 
 dispersed to the four winds. 
 
 Our next view (Plate 10) is taken from the slopes of the 
 Janiculum, just below the Villa Lante. SS. Pietro in Montorio 
 is still high up on our right, while the view is bounded by the 
 Palazzo Corsini on our left, once the residence of that strange 
 being Queen Christina of Sweden, who left her throne, became 
 a Catholic, and spent the rest of her life in Rome. Behind is 
 the Palazzo Farnese, and behind again the Esquiline and the 
 Capitol. In the middle distance in the centre is the Tiber 
 island with its twin bridges and the many campanili of 
 Trastevere; and in the background, as always, the hills—this 
 time the Palestrina group and the Alban Hills, with the way 
 to Naples through the pass between them. 
 
 Next we are transported (Plates 11 and 12) to the north- 
 eastern part of the city; and two fine water-colours show us 
 the city walls adjacent to the Porta S. Lorenzo (through which 
 the Tivoli road passes), first inside and then out, our point de 
 repére being the great nymphzum, wrongly, but conveniently, 
 called the Temple of Minerva Medica, once, as Turner shows 
 us, in picturesque and romantic surroundings, but now the 
 first object that is seen when one approaches the railway 
 station. Once more Turner’s record, apart from its beauty, 1s 
 a precious one, for the upper part of the dome fell only nine 
 years later. It may be interesting to notice that what appears 
 to be an aqueduct is really a misinterpretation of some arches 
 belonging to the internal gallery of the wall of Aurelian, and 
 that this mistake appears to have influenced Turner in the 
 representation he gives of them in Plate 12. 
 
 Plate 13 1s a view of the mountains east of Rome, with the 
 twin summits of Monte Terminillo on the left, and, in the centre 
 the peaks of Monte Velino, also gleaming with snow. Below 
 the latter is the long line of ‘the white houses of Tivoli—of that 
 
 25 
 
part of it, that is, which overlooks the Campagna—and to the 
 right are more snowy summits. ‘Turner’s point of view was 
 probably somewhere outside the Porta S. Lorenzo. 
 
 The remainder of the views we have chosen take us to the 
 centre of the ancient city, the ruins of which exercised a great 
 fascination upon our artist. ‘The first view (Plate 14) shows 
 the Forum as it was in his day, when it deserved its name of 
 Campo Vaccino. On the left is the avenue of trees which 
 traversed its whole length, and behind is the tower of the 
 Capitol surmounting the Palace of the Senator : in the centre 
 the arch of Septimius Severus half buried, with the church of 
 S. Maria in Aracoeli behind : further to the right is the temple 
 of Antoninus and Faustina, with the lower portion of its 
 columns hidden, as they were until a few years back, and to 
 the extreme right the door of the church of SS. Cosma e 
 Damiano, the level of which had been raised in the seventeenth 
 century, and has only recently been lowered. A procession, 
 headed by a cross-bearer, is shown approaching it. 
 
 Another view (Plate 15) is taken from one of the upper 
 terraces of the Farnese gardens. On the left are the open 
 arcades of the Casino Farnese, now the office and dwelling- 
 house of Comm. Giacomo Boni, whose work as director of 
 excavations on the Forum and Palatine has given us back so 
 much of the relics of Rome’s past glories. Over the terrace 
 we see the arches of the great Basilica of Constantine; and 
 close to us in picturesque confusion lie marble fragments of 
 the decoration of the imperial palace. 
 
 The next view (Plate 16) from a little further south, shows 
 us the great Basilica again, the church of S. Francesca Romana, 
 with its tall campanile, planted on the temple of Venus and 
 Rome, and the vast Colosseum, which, as we shall see, had a 
 great fascination for Turner. Wesee it again in the next view 
 (Plate 17); but the foreground is occupied by the Arch of 
 Constantine, seen from the south. ‘Turner has made a most 
 accurate study of the details of it, representing even the 
 individual figures of the reliefs with which it is decorated (most 
 of them taken from earlier buildings) and has even attempted 
 to copy the inscription, not with very great success, as his 
 knowledge of Latin was obviously not very advanced. 
 
 26 
 
PLATE 23 
 ROMAN CAMPAGNA: SUNSET 
 
 (CLXXXVII, 43: National Gallery, No. 329) 
 
 A view from Monte Testaccio looking down 
 the Tiber Valley. Here Turner has recorded 
 for us a scene now completely changed. In 
 his day the Monte Testaccio—formed, strange 
 to relate (as indeed its name implies) entirely 
 of broken jars, which had been used for the 
 conveyance of foodstuffs to Rome—still over- 
 looked a district where not a house rose, and 
 the peace of sunset is most impressive. We 
 see the Aurelian wall sweeping round the foot 
 of the hill from the Porta S. Paolo towards the 
 river. Beyond it there are but few buildings 
 to be seen, except a tower at the point of the 
 river bend, and the great mass of S. Paolo fuori 
 le Mura (St. Paul’s outside the walls) which 
 Turner was one of the last to see before its 
 destruction in 1823. Now the scene is changed 
 completely—the railway and the gasworks are 
 just outside the walls: and within them the 
 only oasis is the Protestant cemetery, where 
 
 Keats and Shelley lie. 
 

 
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A charming view of the Colosseum (Plate 18) is familiar 
 to every visitor, but Turner’s rendering has a great deal of 
 subdued beauty. The same remarks apply to the next 
 (Plate 19) except that Turner’s representation of the Turris 
 Cartularia, where the records of the Church of Rome were once 
 kept, to the left of the Arch of Titus, is one of the last 
 memorials of that building, which was demolished in 1828. 
 The north side of the Arch of Constantine is represented in a 
 very different spirit to the painstaking accuracy evinced in 
 Plate 17. 
 
 The church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo (Plate 20), with its 
 picturesque apse and campanile, occupies the right centre of 
 the picture, and, by good fortune, as yet lacks the ‘‘ con- 
 spicuous dome,’’ as Baedeker calls it, which was added over the 
 chapel of St. John by Cardinal Howard, the titular, in Pius [X’s 
 reign. To the right are the enormous statues on the main 
 facade of the Lateran, and the arches of the aqueduct which 
 Nero built to carry water to the Palatine (from which this view 
 is taken). To the left are the mighty snow mountains above 
 the Liris valley, and the hills near Palestrina; and at the edge 
 of the picture, the massive apse of the church of SS. Quattro 
 Coronati. | 
 
 Plate 21 shows a view looking south-east from the Palatine. 
 In the foreground is the district now occupied by the so-called 
 *“Passeggiata Archeologica,’? or Archzological Park, the 
 formation of which in 1907-14 completely altered the aspect of 
 this part of Rome, which is now traversed by a wide avenue. 
 On the right is the fortified monastery of S. Balbina on the 
 Aventine : then come the Baths of Caracalla, with the Porta 
 S. Sebastiano, which spans the Appian Way, in the distance. 
 Then we see the towers of the churches of S. Sisto and 
 S. Giovanni a Porta Latina : while on the extreme left are the 
 pines of the Villa Mattei. In the background are the 
 Alban Hills. 
 
 One of Turner’s finest drawings, in which the beauty of 
 the detail is especially remarkable, shows the valley between 
 the Czelian and the Aventine as it was in his day. The view 
 (Plate 22) is taken from behind S. Balbina on the lesser half of 
 the Aventine (‘‘ Villa Balbinze ’’ is written in the left-hand 
 
 27 
 
bottom corner of the drawing) near the west corner of the baths 
 of Caracalla. The great arches which carried the palace of 
 Septimius Severus occupy the centre of the picture: and in 
 front of them is a row of houses, which has since been removed. 
 The picturesque Torre della Moletta is seen still nearer; it 
 marks the position of the curved end of the Circus Maximus, 
 the area of which, then occupied only by gardens, but until 
 recently the site of the gasworks, and still devoted to industrial 
 purposes, stretches to the left towards the Campanile of S. 
 Maria in Cosmedin. In the centre of the background is the 
 tower of the Capitol, unchallenged as yet by the great monu- 
 ment, and to the right and left the rest of the city. In the 
 middle distance on the right is the road leading to the Arch of 
 Constantine, and on the extreme right the church of S. 
 Gregorio, the point de départ of the little sketch on the right 
 below, which continues the view, showing the rest of the 
 Colosseum and the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. 
 
 A view from Monte Testaccio is seen in Plate 23, looking 
 down the Tiber Valley. Here, too, Turner has recorded for us 
 a scene now completely changed. In his day the Monte 
 Testaccio—formed, strange to relate (as indeed its name 
 implies) entirely of broken jars, which had been used for the 
 conveyance of foodstuffs to Rome—still overlooked a district 
 where not a house rose, and the peace of sunset is most 
 impressive. We see the Aurelian wall sweeping round the 
 foot of the hill from the Porta S. Paolo towards the river. 
 Beyond it there are but few buildings to be seen, except a tower 
 at the point of the river bend, and the great mass of S. Paolo 
 fuori le Mura (St. Paul’s outside the walls) which Turner was 
 one of the last to see before its destruction in 1823. Now the 
 scene is changed completely—the railway and the gasworks are 
 just outside the walls: and within them the only oasis is the 
 Protestant cemetery, where Keats and Shelley le. 
 
 28 
 
PLATE 24 
 TIVOLI: TOWN WITH CASCADES AND 
 THE CAMPAGNA 
 
 (CLXXXVII, 32: National Gallery, No. 339) 
 
 The view does not show the main fall of the 
 Anio which, in Turner’s day, still discharged 
 its waters into the deep and gloomy gorge below 
 the temples, which tradition has attributed to 
 Vesta and the Sibyl; but we see the smaller 
 falls, the Cascatelle, which pass by underground 
 channels through the town, and serve for its 
 various factories and mills. The town stands 
 on the hill to the left; but we may see more of 
 it in another view (Plate 25). Lower down on 
 a projecting spur is the Villa of Maecenas; 
 while, to the right a hill with rounded top was 
 once occupied by a huge Roman villa, that of 
 Quintilius, the friend of Horace, whose own 
 villa was a little further to the right again, under 
 the monastery of S. Antonio. Between its 
 steep banks the Anio hurries to the open 
 Campagna. Here, too, there has been 
 change: the exigencies of modern life have 
 made a placid lake where Horace saw a 
 rushing river. 
 

 

 

 
WW 
 TURNER’S VISIONS OF TIVOLI 
 
 The drawings dealing with Tivoli, a place which seems to 
 have greatly attracted him, are mainly contained in two sketch- 
 books (CLXXXIII and CLXXXVII). The former contains 
 some fifty pencil sketches, entirely of Tivoli, mostly done on 
 paper tinted with grey, with the high lights wiped out; and 
 of this style we have selected four specimens, including one 
 from the second book, in which pencil sketches (some on leaves 
 similarly prepared) are interspersed with water-colours. 
 Tivoli, as all visitors to Rome know, lies in an open situation 
 looking out to the sunset and the sea. Here were most of the 
 villas of the aristocracy of ancient Rome of which we have 
 knowledge, facing Rome itself and commanding an uninter- 
 rupted view of the Campagna; and this was the Tibur Superbum 
 of which Horace speaks. But the study of Horace’s writings” 
 makes it clear that for him there was another Tibur, where he 
 himself lived, which was probably that of Catullus also— the 
 Tibur of Albunea, of the grove of Tiburnus, of fruit-orchards 
 wet with the spray of cascades, and the headlong fall of the 
 river, ‘ where Anio leaps in foam.’’’ The northern part of the 
 hill on which Tivoli stands overhangs the deep gorge of the 
 Anio, which here makes a leap of some 350 feet down to the 
 level of the plains below. The river flows round it on the east 
 and north; on the east is the great waterfall which was formed 
 in 1826-35 by Pope Gregory XVI, who cut two new tunnels, 
 and thereby saved the town from the constant perils of 
 inundation and even actual destruction. On the north the 
 steep slopes are clothed with vineyards, and then, a little 
 further on, they are occupied by mills and factories of various 
 kinds, some of them of respectable antiquity, which derive 
 their motive power from a branch of the river which travels in 
 a subterranean channel under the town. 
 
 The outfalls of these streams form the Cascatelle, a series 
 of minor waterfalls which rejoin the main stream in two or more 
 
 a3 ‘* Horace’s Villa at Tivoli,’? by G. H. Hallam and T. Ashby, ‘ Journal of 
 Roman Studies,’’ IV (1914), 121 sq. 
 
 29 
 
leaps. ‘The lowest of these waterfalls pass through the arcades 
 of a building which long tradition has baptised as the Villa of 
 Mecenas, while modern research has proved that it wasa large 
 edifice belonging to the Augustales, a body which maintained 
 the worship of the emperor, and, at Tivoli, also took an active 
 part in the cult of Hercules, the tutelary deity of the city. The 
 lofty substructions, through the lower storeys of which a branch 
 of the Roman road to Tibur passed, supported a great arcaded 
 courtyard connected with the temple, which itself probably 
 stood higher up, on the site of the present cathedral. This 
 building marks the western extremity of the town. It was a 
 site on the north side of the gorge, opposite the waterfall, which 
 was inall probability, that of the Villa of Horace, now marked 
 by the low straggling white convent of Sant’ Antonio. Here 
 the roar of the water is always in one’s ears: the distant city 
 of Rome is framed in the green slopes of the gorge: the view 
 is far more intimate, far more secluded, than that from the 
 slopes to the south of the town. 
 
 It was this side of Tivoli, too, which had appealed to British 
 artists of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Richard 
 Wilson, James Skelton, Jacob More, Francis ‘Towne, and many 
 others of less note, had been attracted to this mighty cascade 
 and to the rocky depths into which it fell. 
 
 The water-colour sketch (Plate 24) from the second sketch- 
 book is one of the two water-colours of Tivoli, all the rest which 
 deal with it, even in this book, being in pencil—an instructive 
 commentary on Turner’s method of work. The point of view 
 is from the back of the temples, looking across at the cathedral, 
 with its pointed Campanile. Lower down, on another projecting 
 cliff, is the so-called Villa of Mzecenas. 
 
 Plate 2 5 gives us a charming view taken from the foot of 
 the Monte Catillo (Catillus, an Arcadian, according to some, an 
 Argive, according to others, was one of the legendary founders 
 of Tibur) which lies to the east of the town, just across the Anio. 
 The spot from which Turner drew it must have been exactly 
 above where the river now issues from its twin tunnels and 
 plunges into the abyss. Across the gorge we see on the left 
 the bridge over the Anio just before the old fall, itself unseen, 
 and the buildings of the upper part of the town: the famous 
 
 30 
 
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 PLATE 26. THE VILLA OF M-ECENAS AND CAMPAGNA—PENCIL - 
 (CLXXXIII, 4: Tate Gallery) : 
 
 
 

 

 
 PLATE 27. ARCADES AND WATERS—PENCIL 
 (CLXXXIII, 6: Tate Gallery) 
 
 
 

 
 THE VILLA OF MAECENAS, TIVOLI—PENCIL 
 
 PLATE 28. 
 
 : Tate Gallery) 
 
 (CLXXXIII, 23 
 
 
 
i 
 2 
 
 iid] 
 
 
 
temples which bear the traditional names of Vesta and the 
 Sibyl are further to the right. 
 
 A third view (Plate 26) from the first book, like the other 
 two which follow, is taken from the lower part of the town with 
 an arcade on the extreme left supporting a level space, now 
 known as the Piazza dell’Olmo. It was connected with the 
 temple of Hercules. ‘To the right is the Villa of Mzecenas once 
 more, which, with the wooded hillside below, is now largely 
 occupied by factories and the electric light works of Rome. But 
 the wonderful view of the Campagna, with the Anio winding 
 towards it through its narrow valley, is still the same as ever. 
 The faint line on the horizon shows where this vast expanse, 
 itself so like a sea, fades into the distant coastline. 
 
 Yet another drawing (Plate 27), remarkable for its 
 audacious and splendid perspective, was taken from the left 
 bank of the river, and looks back upon the scenes we have been 
 studying. The water is seen issuing from the Roman arches, 
 and mingling with the hurrying grey-green waters below. We 
 see the arcades which support the Piazza dell’Olmo, and the 
 campanile of the cathedral towering above them : while to the 
 left is the secluded gorge which Horace loved so well. 
 
 Our last view of Tivoli (Plate 28) is taken from beneath the 
 aged olives which grow on the site of the villa attributed (with- 
 out warrant) to Propertius’ mistress Cynthia, some arcades of 
 which are perhaps seen on the right. Above is the great Villa 
 of Quintilius, the friend of Horace : and, as we clearly see, we 
 are looking across to the Villaof Mzecenas on the left. Between 
 the two is the country stretching towards Zagarolo, looking flat 
 from above, but really traversed by deep ravines, though the 
 level of the hills between them is more or less uniform. It rises 
 towards the pass between Palestrina and the Alban Hills, which 
 the railway to Naples traverses. 
 
 Itis sad to have to conclude by noting that the necessities of 
 modern industry are pleaded as a sufficient reason for suppress- 
 ing in whole or in part the flow of water both over the main 
 cascade and over the Cascatelle. The diminution in the volume 
 of the former is already considerable, though the latter have 
 suffered less. Protests have been raised in the Italian Press—it 
 is a mistake to suppose nowadays, whatever may have been the 
 
 31 
 
case in the past, that there are not people in Italy who are alive 
 to the beauties of their country, and ready to do their best to 
 preserve them—but it is hardly to be hoped that the waterfalls 
 will not suffer, and other places as well. A recent writer 
 deplores the effect on the Villa d’Este, which will lose half its 
 charm if its fountains are deprived of their supply, which is the 
 source of their life. Let us hope that they at least may 
 be spared ! 
 
 32 
 

 

 
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