Joseph Mallord William Turner

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 a sketch of an unidentified grave altar, probably found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti. Turner has transcribed the Latin inscription from the monument as ‘DIS MANIBUS | VIX.XXX | AHERENNVIEIVS | CEYGO | BENEMERENTI . FECIT’. The first line translates as ‘To the spirits of the departed’, and is a common phrase on Roman funerary monuments.

There is also a separate rough sketch inverted at the bottom of the page which appears to depict a view of a building through arched windows. Finberg described it as a distant view of St Peter’s.