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 Erminia, Guarding Her Flock, Carves Tancred's Name on a Tree, after Pier Francesco Mola 1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Erminia, Guarding Her Flock, Carves Tancred's Name on a Tree, after Pier Francesco Mola’ 1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Recto:
Erminia, Guarding Her Flock, Carves Tancred’s Name on a Tree, after Pier Francesco Mola 1802
D04379
Turner Bequest LXXII 80
Pencil on white wove paper prepared with a grey wash, 114 x 128 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘80’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘LXXII–80’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner turned the sketchbook to landscape format to make this drawing. His subject is one of two pictures by Mola illustrating Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), which, though not painted as companions being of different sizes and acquired by Louis XIV at different times and from different sources, must have been hanging together in 1802. See folio 79 of this sketchbook (D04378) for Turner’s copy of the other work; folio 18 (D04294) for his copy of Mola’s St John the Baptist Preaching; and the France, Savoy, Piedmont sketchbook (Tate D04394, Turner Bequest LXXIII 2) for his copy of the painter’s Vision of St Bruno.
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
July 2005

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Erminia, Guarding Her Flock, Carves Tancred’s Name on a Tree, after Pier Francesco Mola 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-erminia-guarding-her-flock-carves-tancreds-name-on-a-tree-r1129788, accessed 19 April 2024.