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 from the Vatican Museums, Including the Ash Box of T. Bettvedius Vestalis 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Ash Box of T. Bettvedius Vestalis’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Recto:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Ash Box of T. Bettvedius Vestalis 1819
D15139
Turner Bequest CLXXX 18
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Inscribed by the artist in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘18’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 18’ bottom right
 
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 four objects, some or all of which were probably found in the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top to bottom:
a.
Cecilia Powell has identified the subject of the top sketch as the ash box of T. Bettvedius Vestalis,1 from the collections of the Museo Chiaramonti.2
b.
This sketch appears to depict a sculptural fragment decorated with a palmette motif. The source is currently unidentified.
c.
Also unidentified is this sketch of an ornamental corbel.
d.
The bottom sketch depicts an unidentified composite capital.
Turner has annotated two of the sketches ‘524’ and ‘523’ which presumably relates to exhibit numbers displayed on the individual works. However, they do not appear to correspond to any known lists published within contemporary guide books or catalogues of the Vatican collections.

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.413.
2
See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘Museo Chiaramonti I Seite 309–560’, no.322E, p.523, reproduced pl.54, bottom right.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including the Ash Box of T. Bettvedius Vestalis 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-from-the-vatican-museums-r1139551, accessed 23 September 2024.