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 Study of the Altar of Hercules from the Vatican Museums 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study of the Altar of Hercules from the Vatican Museums’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
Study of the Altar of Hercules from the Vatican Museums 1819
D15153
Turner Bequest CLXXX 25
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 101 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXX 25’ 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). Cecilia Powell has identified this sketch as depicting an altar dedicated to Hercules.1 Today the object can be found in the centre of the Cortile Ottagono (also known as the Cortile Ottagonale, formerly the Cortile del Belvedere) in the Museo Pio-Clementino.2 A drawing of the female figure which sits on top of the monument can be seen on the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 25 verso (D15152; Turner Bequest CLXXX 24a).

Nicola Moorby
November 2009

1
Powell 1984, p.414. See Walther Amelung, Die Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, Berlin 1903–8, vol.II, ‘2. Belvedere II. Seite 153–404’, no.102r, pp.296–7, reproduced pl.17, right.
2
Spinola 1996, COR 6, pp.117–8.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Study of the Altar of Hercules from the Vatican Museums 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-study-of-the-altar-of-hercules-from-the-vatican-museums-r1139565, accessed 25 April 2024.