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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Vatican Fragments Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Funerary Monuments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Tombstone of A. Antestius and his Family 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Funerary Monuments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Tombstone of A. Antestius and his Family’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Recto:
Studies of Funerary Monuments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Tombstone of A. Antestius and his Family 1819
D15119
Turner Bequest CLXXX 8
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘8’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 8’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
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 sketches of various funerary monuments, most or all of which were probably found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top left to bottom right:
a.
Cecilia Powell has identified this sketch as the tombstone of A. Antestius and his family,1 from the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.2 Turner has transcribed the object’s Latin inscriptions as ‘A. ANTESTIVS AAL | SALVIVS’ and ‘ANTIOCHVS RVFA AL NICIA’.
b.
An unidentified funerary altar.
c.
Another unidentified funerary altar inscribed ‘[?SVD | SAIVRWV ...].
d.
In the bottom right-hand corner is an unidentified tombstone fragment. Turner has transcribed the extensive Latin text from the front of the object as ‘D | PVBLICO | LENTVLO | [?DECVRIA] VM | VASCVLARIO | PDVRDENVSEROS | FRATRIOPTVMO | PATRONO | INDOISENTISSIMO | OPTVME DFSEMERITO’.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1894, p.412.
2
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.31c, p.193, reproduced pl.24.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Funerary Monuments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Tombstone of A. Antestius and his Family 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2009, 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-studies-of-funerary-monuments-from-the-vatican-museums-r1139531, accessed 25 April 2024.