Like many of Turner's lecture diagrams, this is much simpler than its source - a treatise by Lorenzo Sirigatti (misspelt by Turner), which it fails to represent adequately. Turner misunderstood Sirigatti's work, which he criticised as unnecessarily complex: 'My position [is] that the complicated appearances which simple forms are often made to assume tend more to ingeniously perplex than to clear the way to a study.'
Gallery label, September 1992
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