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 and Relief Fragments from the Vatican Museums 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural and Relief Fragments from the Vatican Museums’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural and Relief Fragments from the Vatican Museums 1819
D15172
Turner Bequest CLXXX 35
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘35’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 35’ top left, inverted
 
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 six objects found in the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top left to bottom right:
a.
The sketch in the top left-hand corner represents a fragment of a sarcophagus found in the collections of the Museo Chiaramonti.1 The detail depicts an erote (winged god of love) in a boat.
b.
The sketch in the top right-hand corner represents a fragment of sarcophagus, also found in the Museo Chiaramonti.2
c.
Cecilia Powell has identified the left-hand sketch in the second row from the top as part of a decorative relief from the Museo Chiaramonti.3
d.
Powell has identified the middle sketch in the second row as part of relief fragment from the Museo Chiaramonti.4
e.
The sketch on the far right-hand side of the second row also depicts part of a relief fragment from the Museo Chiaramonti.5
f.
Powell has identified the sketch at the bottom as the front of a sarcophagus decorated with reliefs, found in the collections of the Museo Chiaramonti.6

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘Museo Chiaramonti I’, no.118, p.383, reproduced pl.39, lower left. Previously incorrectly identified by Cecilia Powell as an erote from a sculpture of Winter.
2
See Amelung 1903–8, vol.I, no.216, p.457, reproduced pl.47, second from top right. Previously incorrectly identified by Cecilia Powell as an erote from a sculpture of Winter.
3
Powell 1984, p.416; see Amelung 1903–8, no.126, p.392, reproduced pl.42, top right.
4
Ibid; see Amelung 1903–8, no.68, p.356, reproduced pl.38, top right.
5
See Amelung 1903–8, no.67, pp.355–6, reproduced pl.38, top right.
6
Powell 1984, p.115; see Amelung 1903–8, vol.I, no.69, pp.356–7, reproduced pl.38, top.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural and Relief Fragments from 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-studies-of-sculptural-and-relief-fragments-from-the-vatican-r1139584, accessed 23 September 2024.