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 > Rome and Florence Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Sketches of the 'Sleeping Hermaphrodite' in the Uffizi, Florence 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Sketches of the 'Sleeping Hermaphrodite' in the Uffizi, Florence’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 91 Verso:
Two Sketches of the ‘Sleeping Hermaphrodite’ in the Uffizi, Florence 1819
D16640
Turner Bequest CXCI 91 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of these two studies as the Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a classical sculpture which Turner saw in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.1 The artist has made two variant views of the back of the statue, a Roman copy of an original Greek bronze. Further sketches of antique sculpture can be seen on folios 34 verso and 91 (D16549 and D16639), whilst a copy of a painting by Claude, also in the Uffizi, can be found on folio 60 (D16585). Turner also made an extensive study of statuary in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, see the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CLXXX).

Nicola Moorby
February 2011

1
Powell 1984, p.431 and Powell 1987, p.51.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Two Sketches of the ‘Sleeping Hermaphrodite’ in the Uffizi, Florence 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2011, 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-two-sketches-of-the-sleeping-hermaphrodite-in-the-uffizi-r1138533, accessed 26 April 2024.