'Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Female Seated Figure with the Grave Urn of Tiberius Octavius Diadumenus', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Female Seated Figure with the Grave Urn of Tiberius Octavius Diadumenus

From Vatican Fragments Sketchbook

Turner Bequest CLXXX

Date 1819

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 161 x 101 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D15176

Turner Bequest CLXXX 37

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 38 Recto:

Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Female Seated Figure with the Grave Urn of Tiberius Octavius Diadumenus 1819

D15176
Turner Bequest CLXXX 37

Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm

Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘37’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 37’ bottom right

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.
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of the upper sketch as a fragment of a female seated figure and the base upon which it stands, the grave urn of Tiberius Octavius Diadumenus.1 Today these two objects are found in the East Portico of the Cortile Ottagono (also known as the Cortile Ottagonale, formerly the Cortile del Belvedere) in the Museo Pio-Clementino.2 The base is decorated with reliefs and Turner has transcribed the Latin text from the front as ‘D M | TI OCTAVI | DIADVMEN’. He has also annotated the drawing ‘47’, which presumably relates to an exhibit number displayed on the work. However, it does not appear to correspond to any known lists published within contemporary guide books or catalogues of the Vatican collections.
b.
Powell has identified the lower sketch as part of a child’s sarcophagus found in the Sala del Meleagro (Gallery of the Meleager) in the Museo Pio-Clementino.3

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

Powell 1984, p.416. See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘I. Belvedere’, nos.7 and 7a, pp.26–9, reproduced pl.4. See also pl.3.

See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘I. Belvedere’, nos.7 and 7a, pp.26–9, reproduced pls.3 and 4. See also Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.I, Vatican City 1996, no.PE 29, pp.43–4.

Powell 1984, p.416; see Amelung 1908, vol.II, no.14a, p.44, reproduced pl.4.

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.