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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Small Calais Pier Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Commentary on Correggio's 'St Jerome' (Inscription by Turner) 1802

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Commentary on Correggio's 'St Jerome' (Inscription by Turner)’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 72 Verso:
Commentary on Correggio’s ‘St Jerome’ (Inscription by Turner) 1802
D04264
Turner Bequest LXXI 63a
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on wove paper prepared with a grey wash, 187 x 112 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXI 63a’ bottom right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Numbered by Finberg as folio 63a of this sketchbook, this has since been rebound as folio 72 verso. Turner turned the book sideways to make these notes. They read
St. Jerome, probably the under colour is grey for | after the Brown of Asphaltum with traces of oker it is | greenish. The flesh tints are positively cold which | ever provides it as required then all highlights are | warm, here .... The ground only are grey | half tints in the leg and foot of Elizabeth.
For Correggio’s Virgin and Child with St Jerome, Mary Magdalen and the Infant St John the Baptist (‘Il Giorno’), one of the great sights of the Grand Tour in Italy, then of Napoleon’s Louvre and subsequently returned to Parma (Galleria Nazionale), see principally Turner’s Studies in the Louvre sketchbook; in it, he made a copy of the picture (D04385; Turner Bequest LXXII 64) and further notes on it (D04318, D04317; Turner Bequest LXXII 34, 33a). The present brief remarks were probably made during his shorter first visit to Paris on the outgoing stage of his 1802 tour, along with similarly brief comments on Titian’s Entombment in which he compared the two pictures (D04262; Turner Bequest LXXI 62a). For a full discussion of Turner’s investigations of Old Master pictures in the Louvre in 1802, see Introduction to the Louvre book.

David Blayney Brown
April 2003

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Commentary on Correggio’s ‘St Jerome’ (Inscription by Turner) 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2003, 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-commentary-on-correggios-st-jerome-inscription-by-turner-r1133827, accessed 20 September 2024.