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 an Ash Urn and a Plaited Basket with a Lid 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including an Ash Urn and a Plaited Basket with a Lid’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 21 Verso:
Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including an Ash Urn and a Plaited Basket with a Lid 1819
D15144
Turner Bequest CLXXX 20 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
 
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 five objects, some or all of which were probably found in the Museo Chiaramonti. The studies are numbered from top to bottom:
a.
The sketch at the top depicts an unidentified architectural feature
b.
Cecilia Powell has identified the second sketch from the top as an ash urn in the Museo Chiaramonti.1
c.
An unidentified sculptural fragment decorated with a stylised leaf design.
d.
An unidentified sculptural fragment featuring a head and figures.
e.
Powell has identified the last sketch on this page as an ash urn in the form of a plaited basket with a lid,2 found in the Galleria Lapidaria (Lapidary Gallery).3

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.413. See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.I, ‘3. Museo Chiaramonti I Seite 309–560’, no.269E, p.489, reproduced pl.50, centre bottom.
2
Powell 1984, p.413.
3
See Amelung 1903–8, vol.I, ‘2. Galleria Lapidaria Seite 161–308’, no.74b, pp.218–9, reproduced pl.26.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Studies of Sculptural Fragments from the Vatican Museums, Including an Ash Urn and a Plaited Basket with a Lid 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-r1139556, accessed 20 September 2024.