J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > St Peter's Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Sketches of a Roman Temple Copied from a Bas-Relief, ?Rome 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Sketches of a Roman Temple Copied from a Bas-Relief, ?Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
?Sketches of a Roman Temple Copied from a Bas-Relief, ?Rome 1819
D16198
Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 22 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg catalogued this sketch as a reconstruction of the Temple of Vespasian in the Roman Forum, although it is not clear what led him to this assumption. The details of the entablature do not correspond to the surviving fragments and the scrolls within the capitals have more in common with the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Thomas Ashby however, believed that it was a representation of a temple copied from a bas-relief. 1
The sketch is inverted on the page.

Nicola Moorby
September 2008

1
Thomas Ashby, unpublished notes, Turner Bequest Archive, Tate.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘?Sketches of a Roman Temple Copied from a Bas-Relief, ?Rome 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sketches-of-a-roman-temple-copied-from-a-bas-relief-rome-r1139709, accessed 24 April 2024.