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 from the Sala dei Filosofi of the Palazzo Nuovo in the Capitoline Museums, Rome 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Sala dei Filosofi of the Palazzo Nuovo in the Capitoline Museums, Rome’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 54 Verso:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Sala dei Filosofi of the Palazzo Nuovo in the Capitoline Museums, Rome 1819
D15209
Turner Bequest CLXXX 53 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In addition to sketching in the Vatican Museums, Turner made a thorough study of the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the Palazzo Nuovo of the Capitoline Museums. The drawings on this page represent works from the Sala dei Filosofi (Hall of the Philosophers), so called because it contains rows of busts and portraits depicting poets, philosophers and orators from Ancient Greece. All of the subjects were first identified by Cecilia Powell. The studies are numbered from top left to bottom right:
a.
The sketch in the top left-hand corner depicts a relief with Apollo and a Muse.1
b.
The sketches in the top right-hand corner, as well as across the second row from the top, represent a relief decorated with the funeral of Meleager.2 The studies are annotated twice with the number ‘6’. Turner has recorded the full length of the relief by completing the right-hand side of the frieze on the line above the left-hand side.
c.
The sketches on the bottom two rows depict part of a frieze with instruments of ritual sacrifice and naval symbols.3 The line of the relief continues from the right-hand side of the upper row to the left-hand side of the lower, and represents, from left to right, the prow of a warship, a steering paddle, a cheniscus (ornamental prow), an anchor, an aplustre (ornamental stern), an incense burner and another aplustre. The frieze, originally from the Roman Forum, is displayed above a doorway in the Sala dei Filosofi, leading to the Sala degli Imperatori. Related studies can be found on folio 55 (D15210; Turner Bequest CLXXX 54). Powell has noted that these curious shapes had also been sketched by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) amongst his drawings from the antique during the seventeenth century.4
Turner has inscribed some of his studies with the contemporary exhibit numbers of the objects. These date from 1816 when the return to Rome of works spoliated by Napoleon occasioned a complete reorganisation of the Capitoline Museums. The new arrangement was first published in Agostino Tofanelli’s, Catalogo delle sculture antiche e de’quadri esistenti nel Museo e Galleria da Campidoglio (1817).

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.419; H. Stuart Jones, A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome. The Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino, Oxford 1912, ‘Stanza dei Filosofi’ no.116, p.269, reproduced pl.61. See also the Capitoline Museums online collection records, http://www.museicapitolini.net/urn?urn=urn:collectio:0001:scu:00620, accessed November 2009.
2
Powell 1984, p.419; Jones 1912, ‘Stanza dei Filosofi’ no.114, p.267, reproduced pl.61. See also http://www.museicapitolini.net/urn?urn=urn:collectio:0001:scu:00618.
3
Powell 1984, p.419; Jones 1912, ‘Stanza dei Filosofi’ no.99, p.258, reproduced pl.62. See also http://www.museicapitolini.net/urn?urn=urn:collectio:0001:scu:00613.
4
Powell 1987, p.56.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Sala dei Filosofi of the Palazzo Nuovo in the Capitoline Museums, Rome 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-from-the-sala-dei-filosofi-r1139621, accessed 23 June 2025.