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 Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including a Sarcophagus 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including a Sarcophagus’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including a Sarcophagus 1819
D15133
Turner Bequest CLXXX 15
Pencil on paper 101 x 161 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘15’ bottom left, descending left-hand edge
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 15’ bottom left, along descending left-hand edge
 
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 sketches of two objects, one or both of which were probably found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from left to right:
a.
The sketch parallel with the left-hand edge of the page appears to depict a griffin. The source of the detail is currently unidentified. However, the object features within a sheet of antiquities drawn by James Hakewill (1778–1843) in 1817 (British School at Rome Library).1
b.
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of the right-hand sketch as a sarcophagus,2 found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery) of the Museo Chiaramonti.3 The sarcophagus is decorated with sculptural figures and a strigil pattern which Turner only briefly indicated but has noted that it is repeated ‘12’ times on one side. Above the drawing is an inscription by the artist which reads ‘[?278] 1 High’ and ‘MVNIFICENTIA P U SEX PM’.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
See Tony Cubberley and Luke Herrmann, Twilight of the Grand Tour: A Catalogue of the drawings by James Hakewill in the British School at Rome Library, Rome 1992, no.5M.19, reproduced p.313.
2
Powell 1984, p.413.
3
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.169, pp.288–9, reproduced pl.29.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments and Reliefs from the Vatican Museums, Including a Sarcophagus 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-studies-of-sculptural-fragments-and-reliefs-from-the-vatican-r1139545, accessed 26 April 2024.