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 Study of a Torso on a Pedestal Base Dedicated to Q. Plotius Romanus, in the Vatican Museums 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study of a Torso on a Pedestal Base Dedicated to Q. Plotius Romanus, in the Vatican Museums’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Verso:
Study of a Torso on a Pedestal Base Dedicated to Q. Plotius Romanus, in the Vatican Museums 1819
D15140
Turner Bequest CLXXX 18 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). Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of this sketch as a torso,1 mounted on a base with an inscription dedicated to Q. Plotius Romanus.2 Turner has transcribed the full Latin text which reads ‘Q.PLOTIO.Q.FIL | QVIR.ROMANO | EQVOPIBLIO.EXORNO| A IVO.NADRIANO | AFD.FLM.ROM,ET.AUG A FLAMINI DIVI. TITI | HVICDEGRIONES | STATVM. PVBLICEONEND | De CRENERANT | PLOTIVS NIGER . PATER HONORI . VSVS | DESVO.POS.VIT.L B . D D’. The monument can be found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.413. See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.124, pp.255–6, reproduced pl.27.
2
Ibid., no.124b, p.256.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Study of a Torso on a Pedestal Base Dedicated to Q. Plotius Romanus, in the Vatican Museums 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-study-of-a-torso-on-a-pedestal-base-dedicated-to-q-plotius-r1139552, accessed 20 September 2024.