'Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums

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

D15177

Turner Bequest CLXXX 37 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 38 Verso:

Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums 1819

D15177
Turner Bequest CLXXX 37 a

Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm

Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘52’ underneath sketch, inverted

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). Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of this sketch as the front of a sarcophagus with a relief depicting the Muses, from the Museo Pio-Clementino.1 The object used to be exhibited in the Sala del Meleagro (Gallery of the Meleager),2 but today it is found in the East Portico of the Cortile Ottagono (also known as the Cortile Ottagonale, formerly the Cortile del Belvedere).3

Turner has annotated the drawing ‘52’, 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.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

Powell 1984, p.416.

Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘I. Belvedere’, no.13, pp.40–1, reproduced pl.5.

Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.I, Vatican City 1996, no.PE 34, p.46.

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.