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 from the Vatican Museums, Including the Double Urn of C. Licinius C.1. Marius and Licinia C.1. Nysa 1819

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Double Urn of C. Licinius C.1. Marius and Licinia C.1. Nysa’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Double Urn of C. Licinius C.1. Marius and Licinia C.1. Nysa 1819
D15145
Turner Bequest CLXXX 21
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘21’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 21’ bottom right
 
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 four objects, some or all of which were probably found in the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top to bottom:
a.
James Hamilton has identified the sketch at the top as an object, possibly an ash urn, from the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery).1 Turner has transcribed the accompanying Latin texts ‘CNOSSVTIVSCIVL | FELIX | PIISSIMVSEIDELISSIM | DISNAEAL III KEER | AEINIO GALO OS’ and ‘DIC | XV KAV | P.MARIO.ET | AFINIC GALLO IO S’.
b.
This sketch depicts an unidentified sculptural fragment, possibly the top of a grave altar.
c.
A study of part of an Ionic capital, the source of which is currently unidentified.
d.
From the accompanying Latin texts Cecilia Powell has identified the bottom sketch as the double ash urn of C. Licinius C. l. Marius and Licinia C. l. Nysa,2 found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.3 Turner has transcribed the inscriptions as ‘CLICINVS | CL | MARIO’ bottom left and ‘L. ICINIA | CL | NYSA’ bottom right.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Conversation with the author, November 2009. The object is today numbered ‘42’.
2
Powell 1984, p.414.
3
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.59a, p.208, not reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Double Urn of C. Licinius C.1. Marius and Licinia C.1. Nysa 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-from-the-vatican-museums-r1139557, accessed 24 April 2024.