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 > Vatican Fragments Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including the Sarcophagus of M. Aurelius Ermogenes 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including the Sarcophagus of M. Aurelius Ermogenes’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Verso:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including the Sarcophagus of M. Aurelius Ermogenes 1819
D15122
Turner Bequest CLXXX 9 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
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 various objects, most or all of which were probably found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top left to bottom right:
a.
The sketch in the top left-hand corner appears to depict a grave altar although the object is currently unidentified.
b.
In the top right-hand corner is a study of a fragment of sculptural relief depicting the figures of amorini (putti) bearing a festoon. The work is currently unidentified.
c.
A sketch of an unidentified grave altar or ash urn, decorated with a sculptural relief of a vase and the Latin inscription ‘DMS | CVIBIOCS’. The first part translates as ‘D[is] M[anibus] S[acrum]’, ‘Sacred to the spirits of the departed’, and is a common phrase found on Roman funerary monuments.
d.
A sketch of a hexagonal base or ash urn. The object is currently unidentified.
e.
From the transcribed Latin inscription, Cecilia Powell has identified the bottom sketch as part of the sarcophagus of M. Aurelius Ermogenes,1 found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.2 The inscription appears within a round shield held by winged figures and reads ‘D[is] M[anibus] | MAVRELIO | ERMOGENE | AVIXITAN | ILIPOXV’.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.412.
2
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.182, p.294, not reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including the Sarcophagus of M. Aurelius Ermogenes 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2009, 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-studies-of-sculptural-fragments-and-reliefs-from-the-vatican-r1139534, accessed 25 April 2024.