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 Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including an Aedicule and Pediment, and the Grave Altar of Manlia Iucunda 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including an Aedicule and Pediment, and the Grave Altar of Manlia Iucunda’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including an Aedicule and Pediment, and the Grave Altar of Manlia Iucunda 1819
D15123
Turner Bequest CLXXX 10
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 ‘10’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 10’ 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 objects, 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 an Aedicule and Pediment,1 formerly in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery).2 The study includes the Latin inscription ‘GENS’ at the top of the pediment. The aedicule is known as the ‘Nicchia di Todi’, and today it can be found in the Vestibolo of the Scala del Bramante (Hall of the Bramante Staircase).3
b.
This is a detail from one of the decorative capitals from the Aedicule (see above).
c.
This is a detail of one of the decorative relief panels on the side of the Aedicule (see above). The sketch is inscribed above ‘D Fish Crab D of’, next to a detail of a fish.
d.
From the transcribed inscription Cecilia Powell has identified this sketch as part of the Grave altar of Manlia Iucunda,4 from the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery).5 The Latin text reads ‘MANLIA . SEVERA | MANLIALIV CVNDAE | NUTRICI’.
e.
The subject of the sketch in the bottom left-hand corner is currently unidentified although it appears to depict part of a grave altar decorated with a sculptural relief of a griffin.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.412.
2
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, nos.91 and 91a, pp.232–4, reproduced pl.25.
3
Giandomenico Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino, vol.I, Vatican City 1996, no.VB 10, reproduced fig.3, pp.30–1.
4
Powell 1984, p.412.
5
See Amelung 1903–8, vol.I, no.111c, p.247, not reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including an Aedicule and Pediment, and the Grave Altar of Manlia Iucunda 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-sculptural-fragments-and-reliefs-from-the-vatican-r1139535, accessed 19 April 2024.