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 the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Verso:
Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, from the Vatican Museums 1819
D15177
Turner Bequest CLXXX 37 a
Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘52’ underneath sketch, 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). Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of this sketch as the front of a sarcophagus with a relief depicting the Muses, from the Museo Pio-Clementino.1 The object used to be exhibited in the Sala del Meleagro (Gallery of the Meleager),2 but today it is found in the East Portico of the Cortile Ottagono (also known as the Cortile Ottagonale, formerly the Cortile del Belvedere).3
Turner has annotated the drawing ‘52’, which presumably relates to an exhibit number displayed on the work. However, it does not appear to correspond to any known lists published within contemporary guide books or catalogues of the Vatican collections.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.416.
2
Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘I. Belvedere’, no.13, pp.40–1, reproduced pl.5.
3
Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.I, Vatican City 1996, no.PE 34, p.46.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Study of the Front of a Sarcophagus with a Relief Depicting the Muses, 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-study-of-the-front-of-a-sarcophagus-with-a-relief-depicting-r1139589, accessed 22 September 2024.