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 Vatican Museums, Including the Grave Altar of Cn. Turpilius Aphrodisius, with Inscription and the Grave Altar of Julia Nice 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Grave Altar of Cn. Turpilius Aphrodisius, with Inscription and the Grave Altar of Julia Nice’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Grave Altar of Cn. Turpilius Aphrodisius, with Inscription and the Grave Altar of Julia Nice 1819
D15148
Turner Bequest CLXXX 22 a
Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
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 two objects, one or both of which were probably found in the Museo Chiaramonti. There is also a separate small landscape view on the far left-hand side, parallel with the left-hand edge. The studies are numbered from left to right:
a.
This rough landscape sketch appears to depict a round classical temple, possibly the so-called Temple of Vesta at Tivoli.
b.
From the accompanying Latin inscription Cecilia Powell has identified the second sketch from the left as the grave altar of Cn. Turpilius Aphrodisius,1 found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.2 The transcribed text reads ‘D M | CN. T VRP ILLI | APHRODISS | AGRILIA.AF | IANNAQIA | CONIV QIBEMEDFS | MERITO . FFIVS’. The first part translates as ‘D[is] M[anibus]’, ‘To the spirits of the departed’, and is a common phrase found on Roman funerary monuments.
c.
Powell has also identified the sketch on the right as representing the grave altar of Julia Nice in the Galleria Lapidaria.3 The transcribed inscription reads ‘DIS MANIBVS | ITALI IVLIA ENICENI | C.NIVGI | BENEMEREVVSI | FFCIT | SEXAVONIVS | MECVRIVS | CVMQVAVIXI | ANNISXVTIS | STFQVDRELLO’.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.414.
2
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.14a, p.174, not reproduced.
3
Powell 1984, p.414; see Amelung 1903–8, vol.I, no.167, p.288, not reproduced.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Grave Altar of Cn. Turpilius Aphrodisius, with Inscription and the Grave Altar of Julia Nice 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-vatican-museums-r1139560, accessed 06 May 2025.