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 a Statue of a Nymph and Part of the Front of a Sarcophagus 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Statue of a Nymph and Part of the Front of a Sarcophagus’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Verso:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Statue of a Nymph and Part of the Front of a Sarcophagus 1819
D15185
Turner Bequest CLXXX 41 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 objects found in the Museo Pio-Clementino. The studies are numbered from top to bottom:
a.
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of the top sketch as a statue of a nymph.1 Today this figure, known as the ‘Ballerina di Goethe’, can be found in the Gabinetto delle Maschere (Cabinet of Masks).2 The object is annotated with the number ‘945’.
b.
Powell has further identified the sketch at the bottom as representing a fragment of the front of a sarcophagus,3 also from the Gabinetto delle Maschere.4 The object is annotated with the number ‘937’.
Turner’s annotations presumably relate to exhibit numbers displayed on the individual works. However, they do 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. See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘4 ... Gabinetto delle Maschere’, no.425, pp.673–6, reproduced pl.75.
2
Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.II, Vatican City 1999, no.GM 38, pp.167–8, reproduced fig.28.
3
Powell 1984, p.416. See Amelung 1908, vol.II, no.426, pp.677–9, reproduced pl.78.
4
Spinola 1999, vol.II, no.GM 22, p.156, reproduced fig.28.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including a Statue of a Nymph and Part of the Front of a Sarcophagus 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-r1139597, accessed 26 April 2024.