'Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Dionysiac Sarcophagus', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Dionysiac Sarcophagus

From Vatican Fragments Sketchbook

Turner Bequest CLXXX

Date 1819

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 101 x 161 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D15189

Turner Bequest CLXXX 43 a

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Vatican Fragments Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 44 Verso:

Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Dionysiac Sarcophagus 1819

D15189
Turner Bequest CLXXX 43 a

Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm

Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

During his 1819 stay in Rome, one of Turner’s most extensive sketching campaigns was the large number of pencil studies made from the sculpture collections of the Vatican Museums (for a general discussion, see the introduction to the sketchbook). This page contains sketches of objects found in the Museo Pio-Clementino. The studies are numbered from top to bottom:

a.
The sketch appears to depict a sculptural relief with figures, the source of which is currently unidentified.
b.
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of the lower sketch as a sarcophagus with scenes depicting Dionysius and Aridane.1 Today the object can be found in the North Portico of the Cortile Ottagono (also known as the Cortile Ottagonale, formerly the Cortile del Belvedere).2 The drawing is annotated with the number ‘225’, although it is not known to what this refers.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

Powell 1984, p.417; see Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘I ... Belvedere’, no.37, pp.88–9, reproduced pl.9.

Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.I, Vatican City 1996, no.PN 6, p.92.

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.