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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Switzerland 1802 > Studies in the Louvre Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Commentary on 'Erminia and Valfrino Tending the Wounded Tancred after the Battle with Argante' and 'Erminia, Guarding her Flock, Carving Tancred's Name on a Tree' by Pier Francesco Mola (Inscriptions by Turner) 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Commentary on 'Erminia and Valfrino Tending the Wounded Tancred after the Battle with Argante' and 'Erminia, Guarding her Flock, Carving Tancred's Name on a Tree' by Pier Francesco Mola (Inscriptions by Turner)’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Verso:
Commentary on ‘Erminia and Valfrino Tending the Wounded Tancred after the Battle with Argante’ and ‘Erminia, Guarding her Flock, Carving Tancred’s Name on a Tree’ by Pier Francesco Mola (Inscriptions by Turner) 1802
D04377
Turner Bequest LXXII 78a
Inscribed by Turner in ink (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper prepared with a grey wash, 128 x 114 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXII–78a’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See folios 79 and 80 of this sketchbook (D04378, D04379) for Mola’s pictures illustrating Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and Turner’s copies. Turner’s notes here read:
Two subjects from Tass Jerusalem | Dorinda and the death of Tancred – | T by far the best as to color and offering | fine parts. Some objection may be made | to the domestic being in Red, Tancred Blue and | Erminia [Finberg: Emilia] in yellow. But yet are united by colour | when consider’d abstractedly but glow | upon the final view. The yellow streak | of light above the Blue mountain is overstated | and the Blue too vivid yet upon the whole | it is a good ton’d and brilliant picture | painted upon a Ground of little value as | the paint is loaded. The Dorinda as | good as to the effect but not happy in the tones, which are rather black and in | total want of half shadow and color. D is in yellow [Finberg: D --- yellow], the sheep after the yellow streak | in sky is the first and broadest light showing and not so grand in T but better handled.

David Blayney Brown
July 2005

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Commentary on ‘Erminia and Valfrino Tending the Wounded Tancred after the Battle with Argante’ and ‘Erminia, Guarding her Flock, Carving Tancred’s Name on a Tree’ by Pier Francesco Mola (Inscriptions by Turner) 1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2005, 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-commentary-on-erminia-and-valfrino-tending-the-wounded-r1129786, accessed 19 April 2024.