Tivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the Cascatelle

Tivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the Cascatelle

Joseph Mallord William Turner

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After experiencing an episode of ill health, Cozens became mentally and physically disabled and, in 1794, was placed under the care of Dr Monro, a physician and patron of the arts. Appreciating Cozens's exceptional contributions as a watercolorist, Monro employed young artists, such as Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner, to copy Cozens’s drawings that he either owned or borrowed from friends. This view in Tivoli, near Rome, is such a "Monro School" sheet, produced at one of the evening sessions held in the late 1790s at Monro's house in the Adelphi, off the Strand, London. The view shown here was a popular site among eighteenth-century painters and travelers, then known as the Villa of Maecenas. Today, the ruins are identified as the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor, built around 120-80BCE, and in this drawing are represented from across the Aniene valley. Cozens sketched several views in Tivoli in April 1777, and the present drawing is likely based on a work from this time. To create the drawing, Girtin traced the original composition in graphite directly from Cozens’s sketch (now lost) and Turner then applied gray and green washes.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the CascatelleTivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the CascatelleTivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the CascatelleTivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the CascatelleTivoli, Villa of Maecenas and part of the Cascatelle

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.