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

During his 1819 stay in Rome, one of Turner’s most extensive sketching campaigns was the large number of studies made from the sculpture collections of the Vatican Museums (for a general discussion, see the introduction to the sketchbook). As Cecilia Powell first identified, the subject of this sketch is a detailed study of part of the sarcophagus of the Roman consul, Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, which had been discovered during the late eighteenth century within the Tomb of the Scipios on the Via Appia.1 Turner saw the object on display in the Vestibolo Quadrato (Square Hall) of the Museo Pio-Clementino and also sketched it in situ, see folio 37 (D15174; Turner Bequest CLXXX 36). This study, however, records the decorative ornamental detail adorning the top of the sarcophagus. Powell has noted that the artist has misleadingly represented the spacing of the dentillation, the number of guttae and the profile of the mouldings at the base.2

The majority of Turner’s sketches in the Vatican were executed in pencil on white paper. This page however contains black pen and ink over paper prepared with a grey wash. There are in fact eight such leaves bound into this sketchbook which Peter Bower has noted all come from a single sheet of trimmed white wove Whatman paper.3 This is the only washed page which has been worked upon. Turner also made a number of tonal drawings in Rome using pencil and white chalk on a grey ground, see the Roman Colour Studies sketchbook (Tate, CLXXXIX) and Small Roman Colour Studies sketchbook (Tate CXC).