J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Perspective lectures c.1809-28 > Perspective Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Notes on Art, from Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Art, from Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’ c.1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: Notes on Art, from Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo circa 1809
D07418
Turner Bequest CVIII 38a
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The whole page is taken up with the following notes:
||| Anecdotes of the Old Masters of being skilfull mechanicly | Leonard de Vinci told by Sig Francisco Melzi | invented an artificial[...] Lyon which open his | breast and shewd the arms Lilies <...> to Francis the first | of France Architas Tarentinus made a wooden dove | to fly that Albertus Magnus : brazen Head spake | to St. Tho’ of Aquine which he brake thinking it was | the Devil. Cæsar Sestius, followed Leon and was | the friend of Raphael to whom it is said he often jestingly | said, that it seemed a very strange thing unto him that they | two being such near friends in the Arte of Painting yet | spared not each other when they offended. But now | malicious envie (to our disadvantage taketh place of former | giving matter to ignorant people to disgrace and carpe at other | mens perfections, Paulo Lomazzo} | Paul Lomatius} Gaudentius his Master
Jerrold Ziff has identified these notes, continuing from folio 34 verso (D07410) (after several pages from other sources) as free transcriptions from the 1598 English edition of Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge Carvinge & Buildinge (see the sketchbook Introduction),1 in this case chapter I, ‘Of the Vertue and Efficacie of Motion’ of ‘The Seconde Booke: Of the Actions, Gestures, Situation, Decorum, Motion, Spirit, and Grace of Pictures’, pages 2 (as far as ‘the Devil’) and 3. Ziff notes how Turner ‘pounced’ upon this story of ‘envy and ignorance’ in relation to art, and points out another anecdote in the same vein recorded earlier in the sketchbook (folio 32 verso; D07406).2
The two forms of Lomazzo’s name are bracketed, one above the other. The Italian painter and sculptor ‘Gaudentius’ (Gaudenzio Ferrari, 1475/80–1546)3 is also mentioned in Turner’s earlier notes from Lomazzo on folio 34 recto (D07409). The anecdote is taken from chapter II, ‘Of the Necessitie of Motion’ of the ‘Seconde Booke’, page 7, where Lomazzo refers to him as ‘mine olde Master’, and continues opposite on folio 39 recto (D07419), the next passage of Turner’s extensive notes from this source. He is mentioned again on folio 39 verso (D07420).

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Ziff 1984, pp.46, 49 notes 6 and 10, and ‘Appendix I’, p.50, with transcription of Turner’s notes (followed here with slight variations); see also Davies 1988, p.288; Lomazzo also checked directly.
2
Ziff 1984, p.46.
3
Riccardo Passoni, ‘Ferrari, Gaudenzio’, Grove Art Online, accessed 30 April 2008, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Notes on Art, from Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo c.1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-notes-on-art-from-giovanni-paolo-r1136614, accessed 04 April 2026.