Joseph Mallord William TurnerInscriptions by Turner: Notes on Pietro Bartoli c.1808-11

The upper part of the page, turned vertically, is taken up with the following notes:

Pietro Santi Bartoli (1615–1700) was a painter and engraver who had been a pupil of Nicolas Poussin, and published many prints of Roman monuments.1 Maurice Davies notes that he was the ‘author of several works on Roman antiquities’, and is correct in tentatively reading the last line as a reference to the ‘Antonine’ Column2 in Rome, i.e. the Column of Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus Augustus).

Bartoli’s Columna Antoniniana Marci Aurelii Antonini Augusti rebus gestis insignis, with seventy-five plates of the column, is in the British Library, London, although that copy is dated in the catalogue to ‘1672?’. Turner consulted various perspective treatises and related books then held at the British Museum in preparation for his Royal Academy perspective lectures, first delivered in 1811 (see the Introduction to the present sketchbook and to the Perspective sketchbook: Tate; Turner Bequest CVIII). He represented parts of the Column of Marcus Aurelius in two of his lecture diagrams, as correctly identified by Andrea Fredericksen in her entries for the present catalogue (Tate D17121, D17124; Turner Bequest CXCV 150, 153).3