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 > Pompeii, Amalfi, &c., Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inside the Theatre, Herculaneum, with the Inscription to Marcus Nonius Balbus 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inside the Theatre, Herculaneum, with the Inscription to Marcus Nonius Balbus’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 85 Verso:
Inside the Theatre, Herculaneum, with the Inscription to Marcus Nonius Balbus 1819
D15895
Turner Bequest CLXXXV 83 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil Latin text top right (see main catalogue entry), and ‘[?Portex Pro]’ bottom centre
Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘not clear – but seems as other to | have been dedicated to the person of | consular dignity – ’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The location of this sketch of Herculaneum can be identified from the Latin inscription, which as Cecilia Powell first noted, came from the theatre, one of the only places during the early nineteenth century where anything of note could be seen.1 Turner has transcribed the text from a pedestal on right-hand side of proscenium (stage): ‘M. NONIO. M.F. BALBO | PR.PRO.COS | HERCVLANENSES’,2 which once supported a statue robed in a toga, representing the son of M. Nonius Balbus, a senator and important patron in Herculaneum.3 For a full description of the theatre and Turner’s sketches see folio 86 (D15896; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 84).
In the bottom right-hand corner of the sheet, another person has provided an English explanation of the inscription. The unknown author appears to be the same hand as that on a sketch of Virgil’s Tomb at Posillipo, see folio 70 (D15865; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 68).4 Another comment relating to the theatre can be seen on folio 86 (D15896; Turner Bequest CLXXXV 84).

Nicola Moorby
November 2010

1
Powell 1984, p.496 note 82.
2
E.R. Barker, Buried Herculaneum, London 1908, p.192. The dedication translates as ‘The men of Herculaneum, to Marcus Nonius Balbus, son of Marcus, praetor and proconsul’. See also http://www.ercolano.unina.it/fotoErcolano/tea_79.jpg, accessed November 2010.
3
The pedestal and inscription can be seen in an illustration in Guide to Herculaneum Illustrated, Pompeii 1870, opposite p.25.
4
See Gage 1974, p.87 note 52.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Inside the Theatre, Herculaneum, with the Inscription to Marcus Nonius Balbus 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2010, 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-inside-the-theatre-herculaneum-with-the-inscription-to-r1138366, accessed 24 April 2024.