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 Study of a Relief from a Sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums; and Sketches of People 1819

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study of a Relief from a Sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums; and Sketches of People’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
Study of a Relief from a Sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums; and Sketches of People 1819
D15167
Turner Bequest CLXXX 32 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil ‘8 feet long 28 [?high]’ top right. Also ‘Green Gold’ centre of page within sketches of figures, inverted
 
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 a sketch of a relief fragment which Cecilia Powell has identified as part of a sarcophagus found in the collection of the Museo Chiaramonti.1
Also on this page are a number of inverted sketches of men and women wearing contemporary dress. Unlike the majority of drawings within this sketchbook these do not appear to be studies of classical statuary but rather to have been drawn from life. Other figure studies can be found on the inner front cover and on folios 6 verso, 14 verso, 15 verso, 64, 69, 80, 80 verso, 82 and 82 verso (D40619, D15114, D15130, D15132, D15223, D15228, D15245, D15246, D15249 and D15250; Turner Bequest CLXXX 5a, 13a, 14a, 63, 68, 79, 79a, 81 and 81a).

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.415; see Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘Museo Chiaramonti I’, no.180, pp.431–5, reproduced pl.45, lower left.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Study of a Relief from a Sarcophagus in the Vatican Museums; and Sketches of People 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-study-of-a-relief-from-a-sarcophagus-in-the-vatican-museums-r1139579, accessed 18 May 2025.