The top half of the page is taken up with the following notes:
Monte Cavalio figure 19 ½ high | the Head 8 ¼ leg 5 feet 6 .. | The Baso Rilivo belong to Ld Cawdor | Sculpture ancient brought from | Rome
Maurice Davies has noted that various sculptures and bas reliefs were addressed in early drafts of Turner’s first perspective lecture,
1 delivered at the Royal Academy in January 1811 (see the Introduction to the sketchbook).
Two giant marble statues, called variously ‘Alexander and Bucephalus’ (Alexander the Great’s horse), with both supposedly depicted twice, ‘Castor and Pollux’ (the ‘Dioscuri’), the ‘Horse Tamers’ and so on, stand in the Piazza del Quirinale, Rome. The area was formerly known on their account as Monte Cavallo – ‘cavallo’ being the Italian for ‘horse’. They were formerly attributed to Phidias and Praxiteles, following Roman inscriptions to that effect.
2 In 1819, Turner drew the statues in the
St Peter’s sketchbook on his first visit to Rome (Tate
D16278; Turner Bequest CLXXXVIII 67). Monte Cavallo is also mentioned in the contemporary
Perspective sketchbook (Tate
D07408,
D07459; Turner Bequest CVIII 33a, 61a).
John Campbell, 1st Baron Cawdor (1755–1821), travelled extensively in Italy and was the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova’s first British patron.
3
Matthew Imms
January 2012
