Joseph Mallord William Turner

Diagram of a Perspective Method for a Cube, after Pietro Accolti

c.1809

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Perspective Sketchbook
Medium
Pen and ink on paper
Dimensions
Support: 88 × 115 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D07434
Turner Bequest CVIII 46 a

Catalogue entry

The diagram is not annotated. Maurice Davies has identified it as taken from Pietro Accolti, Lo Inganno de gl’occi, prospettiva pratica, Florence 1625, page 46, observing that Turner ‘never seems to be clear about what is shown’.1 He probably consulted the copy at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London). The perspective lecture diagram based on this drawing (Tate D17046; Turner Bequest CXCV 76) is inaccurately labelled ‘ACCOLOTTI’ and ‘1643’.2
There is another version of this diagram on folio 45 verso (D07432), and a further diagram from the same source on folio 80 verso (D07489).

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, pp.288, 92.
2
Ibid., p.309 note 62.

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