Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Italy
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
Oil paintings
Collection
Turner owned by Tate
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558" aria-label="More by Joseph Mallord William Turner" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joseph Mallord William Turner</a>
Caligulas Palace and Bridge
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
architecture
Baiae - non-specific
bank
bay
boat - non-specific
bridge
bridges and viaducts
cities, towns, villages (non-UK)
classical
countries and continents
decay
emotions, concepts and ideas
figure
Italy
palace
people
periods and styles
places
residential
residential
ruins
seascapes and coasts
society
townscape
townscapes / man-made features
transport: water
universal concepts
water: inland
<p>Roman Emperor Caligula built a three-milelong floating bridge to prove his brilliance. He crossed his bridge – supposedly made from boats fastened together – on horseback. Turner shows a crumbling, overgrown stone bridge, however, and exhibited this painting with his own poetry that spoke of ‘ruind hopes’. Showing it the year after a wave of revolutions had swept through Europe, its message that the glory of arrogant rulers would fade over time was particularly loaded. Reviewers in 1831 praised its ‘magical’ atmosphere. It hung next to a painting by John Constable, a pairing the critics described as ‘fire and water’.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
13 August 2001 – 23 June 2002
2002-06-23
13 August 2001 – 23 June 2002
2002-06-23
2001-08-13
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-08-13
Painting Landscape and History
Collection based display
15 July 2002 – 21 May 2007
2007-05-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-15
Exhibiting Turner
Collection based display
16 November 2008 – 7 June 2009
2009-06-07
23 November 2008 – 22 February 2009
2009-02-22
2008-11-23
Palazzo dei Diamanti (Ferrara, Italy)
23 March 2009 – 7 June 2009
2009-06-07
2009-03-23
National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh, UK)
15 July 2009 – 25 October 2009
2009-10-25
2009-07-15
Szépmüvészeti Múzeum (Budapest, Hungary)
http://www.szepmuveszeti.hu/
2008-11-16
Turner and Italy
Loan-out
5 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
5 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
2009-08-05
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-08-05
Italian Odyssey
Collection based display
7 February 2015 – 1 March 2020
2020-03-01
7 February 2015 – 1 March 2020
2020-03-01
2015-02-07
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-02-07
Constable
Collection based display
1 September 2020 – 27 November 2022
2022-11-27
1 September 2020
2020-09-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2020-09-01
Clore 106
Collection based display
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 107
Collection based display
Caligula’s Palace and Bridge
support: 1372 × 2464 mm
frame: 1870 × 2950 × 185 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the <a href="/search?gid=999999781" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Turner Bequest</a> 1856
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<p>Roman Emperor Caligula built a three-milelong floating bridge to prove his brilliance. He crossed his bridge – supposedly made from boats fastened together – on horseback. Turner shows a crumbling, overgrown stone bridge, however, and exhibited this painting with his own poetry that spoke of ‘ruind hopes’. Showing it the year after a wave of revolutions had swept through Europe, its message that the glory of arrogant rulers would fade over time was particularly loaded. Reviewers in 1831 praised its ‘magical’ atmosphere. It hung next to a painting by John Constable, a pairing the critics described as ‘fire and water’.</p>
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2023-10-25T00:00:00
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<p><b>337. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-caligulas-palace-and-bridge-n00512" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00512</span></a>]<b> Caligula's Palace and Bridge</b> Exh. 1831</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (512)</p>
<p>Canvas, 54 × 97 (137 × 246·5)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (53, ‘Caligula's Bridge’ 8'2" × 4'7 1/4"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> R.A. 1831 (162); R.A. 1974–5 (485, repr.).</p>
<p><b>Engr.</b> By E. Goodall 1842.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Ruskin 1843 and 1860 (1903–12, iii, p. 241, vii, p. 431); Thornbury 1862, i, p. 319; 1877, pp. 316, 447; Hamerton 1879, p. 257; Monkhouse 1879, pp. 97–8; Bell 1901, p. 115 no. 171; Armstrong 1902, p. 219; Rawlinson ii 1913, pp. 336–7; MacColl 1920, p. 16; Whitley 1930, p. 212; Davies 1946, p. 186; Finberg 1961, pp. 326–7, 340, 386–7, 491 no. 357; Lindsay 1966<sup>2</sup>, p. 49; Gage 1969, p. 103; Reynolds 1969, p. 186; Gage 1974, p. 82, pl. 19; Wilton 1979, p. 221.</p>
<p>Exhibited in 1831 with the following lines attributed to Turner's <i>Fallacies of Hope</i> (here quoted from Turner's own list of his 1831 exhibits, now in the Tate Gallery archive):</p>
<p>‘What now remains of all the mighty Bridge
<br/>Which made the Lucrine Lake an inner pool,
<br/>Caligula, but massy fragments left,
<br/>As monuments of doubt and ruind hopes
<br/>Yet gleaming in the Morning's ray, doth tell
<br/>How Baia's shore was loved in times gone by?’</p>
<p align="right"><i>MS. Fallacies of Hope</i>.</p>
<p>In the printed catalogue ‘doth’, in the fifth line, was replaced by ‘that’, and there were changes in capitalisation, etc. Turner's original title, number 2 on the list of his 1831 R.A. exhibits in the Tate Gallery archives, was also slightly altered: originally it read ‘Caligula: Palace and Bridge’.</p>
<p>In this picture Turner returns to the theme of <i>Bay of Baiae</i> (No. 230 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-bay-of-baiae-with-apollo-and-the-sibyl-n00505" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00505</span></a>]), the decay of past glories. Caligula's bridge crossed the three and a half Roman miles from Baiae to Puteoli and was described by Oliver Goldsmith as ‘the most notorious instance of his fruitless profusions’. It was built to confute a prophecy that Caligula would no more become Emperor than he could drive his chariot across the Bay of Baiae. Although the bridge was in fact a bridge of boats Turner followed popular accounts in showing it as a solid structure (see Gage 1974, p. 47).</p>
<p>Unlike <i>Vision of Medea</i>, exhibited the same year (No. 293 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-vision-of-medea-n00513" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00513</span></a>]), this picture seems to have aroused universal praise. ‘In this picture “the fit hath gone off”’ said the <i>Athenaeum</i> for 14 May 1831; ‘Here we have the poetry of nature lavished upon us with a courteous hand’. <i>La Belle Assemblée</i> described it, in its June number, as ‘one of the most magnificent and extraordinary productions of the day ... it is poetry itself. The air-tint—the distances—are magical: for brilliancy and depth, and richness, and power, it can hardly be surpassed.’ For <i>The Times</i> of 6 May it was ‘one of the most beautiful and magnificent <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscapes</span></a> that ever mind conceived or <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> drew.’ The <i>Library of the Fine Arts</i> for June 1831, anticipating Ruskin's criticisms of these packed Italian landscapes as ‘nonsense pictures’, described it more positively as ‘a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, any one portion of which is in itself a picture, and would make the fortune of another artist.’</p>
<p>Turner's picture hung next to Constable's <i>Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows</i> (Coll: the Dowager Lady Ashton). ‘Fire and Water’, the <i>Literary Gazette</i> for 14 May exclaimed. ‘Exaggerated, however, as both these works are,—the one all heat, the other all humidity,— who will deny that they both exhibit, each in its way, some of the highest qualities of art? None but the envious or ignorant.’ Apparently Constable, who was on the Hanging Committee that year, had moved Turner's picture and replaced it with his own, for which Turner teased him unmercifully at dinner with General Phipps in Mount Street, to the great amusement of the party, mainly artists (the story is David Roberts's, given in Thornbury 1862, ii, p. 56, and dated to this year by Finberg 1961, p. 327).</p>
<p>The picture was <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a> in 1842 by E. Goodall, whose son told W.G. Rawlinson (ii 1913, pp. 336–7) that Turner, deciding that the composition required more figures, added them on the picture itself, first with white <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/chalk" title="Glossary definition for 'Chalk'"><span>chalk</span></a>, and then, when Goodall was unable to follow these slight sketches, in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a>. According to Thornbury, who, however, asserts that the figures were introduced, with Turner's assent, by Goodall, they were the children playing with goats in the foreground (1862, i, p. 319). Recent restoration, however, has failed to determine that any of the figures as they now are were painted in watercolour; perhaps Turner went over them later in oils.</p>
<p>The picture was transferred from its original <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> onto a new one, probably in 1907, at which time there were extensive losses, particularly top left and top right and along a crack stretching most of the way across the picture from the left just above half-way up. </p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, <i>The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner</i>, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-22T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults architecture Baiae - non-specific bank bay boat - non-specific bridge bridges and viaducts cities, towns, villages (non-UK) classical countries and continents decay emotions, concepts and ideas figure Italy palace people periods and styles places residential residential ruins seascapes and coasts society townscape townscapes / man-made features transport: water universal concepts water: inland