Joseph Mallord William Turner

This is a sketch of Copenhagen’s Church of Our Lady, now the city’s cathedral. Turner shows the nave and hemi-spherical apse, decorated with sculptures of Christ and the Apostles by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844). Thorvaldsen modelled these sculptures in Rome where he maintained a workshop in the stables of the Palazzo Barberini. 1As Tate curator David Blayney Brown writes, Thorvaldsen ‘had apparently been influenced by Greek marbles from Aegina, which he had restored for the King of Bavaria’.2 Turner had seen the very same marbles in Munich in 1833, on a tour through Germany and Austria to Venice. The statues are rendered here in shorthand with an inscription at rear naming: ‘St B’ [Bartholomew], ‘Thomas’, ‘Jacobus’ [James], and ‘Phippus’ [Philip].

For more sketches of Hamburg see Tate D30842–D30860, D30862–D30870, D30872, D30874–D30880, D30882–D30886; Turner Bequest CCCV 11a–20a, 21a–25a, 26a, 27a–30a, 31a–33a.