Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Dying Ananias

c.1799–1800

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Egyptian Details Sketchbook
Medium
Dimensions
Support: 83 × 166 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D03966
Turner Bequest LXVI 127 a

Catalogue entry

This is a generalized sketch of the pose of Ananias in The Death of Ananias, one of a series of New Testament subjects painted by Raphael (1483–1520) in 1515 as cartoons for tapestries for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (Royal Collection, on permanent loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The figure is reversed from the original, indicating that Turner copied it from a print. He seems to have made use of it for a figure near the centre of his own essay in the Biblical sublime, The Destruction of Sodom, a painting perhaps shown at his own gallery in 1805 (Tate N00474).1

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.44 no.56, pl.66.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop