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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Diagram of a Perspective Method for a Cube, after Pietro Accolti c.1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Verso:
Diagram of a Perspective Method for a Cube, after Pietro Accolti circa 1809
D07432
Turner Bequest CVIII 45a
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 88 x 115 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘1625 | Pietro Accolti Gentilhomo Florentino | <?Dep>’ at top
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Maurice Davies has identified this diagram as taken from Pietro Accolti, Lo Inganno de gl’occhi, prospettiva pratica, Florence 1625, page 46, observing that Turner ‘never seems to be clear about what is shown in the diagram’.1 He probably consulted the copy at the British Museum (since transferred to the British Library, London). The perspective lecture diagram based on this drawing (Tate D17046; Turner Bequest CXCV 76) is inaccurately labelled ‘ACCOLOTTI’ and ‘1643’.2
There is another version of this diagram on folio 46 verso (D07434), and a further diagram from the same source on folio 80 verso (D07489).

Matthew Imms
June 2008

1
Davies 1994, pp.288, 92.
2
Ibid., p.309 note 62.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Diagram of a Perspective Method for a Cube, after Pietro Accolti c.1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2008, 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-diagram-of-a-perspective-method-for-a-cube-after-pietro-r1136628, accessed 28 March 2024.