J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This page contains very slight, rough sketches of two female figures, both of whom are carrying pots or baskets on their heads. Also in the bottom left-hand corner, parallel with the left-hand edge, is another faint drawing which appears to depict part of a building. The majority of the sheet, however, is devoted to handwritten pencil notes, much of which is illegible. The inscription, partially transcribed by Finberg,1 reads:

Cecilia Powell has suggested that the last part of the inscription indicates that Turner visited the studio of the Danish sculptor, Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770–1844), and that, additionally, he was taken by Antonio Canova (1757–1822) to see the latter’s famous sculpture of Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix 1805–8 in the Palazzo Borghese.2 However, a more likely explanation is that these comments refer to the Palazzo Torlonia-Bolognetti, an opulent palace which, before its demolition at the beginning of the twentieth century, stood in Piazza Venezia, Rome. Also known during the nineteenth century as the Palazzo Nuova di Torlonia, the palace had been acquired by the Torlonia family in 1807 and lavishly redecorated by many of the most celebrated artists of the period including Thorwaldsen and Canova, and a fresco by Vincenzo Camuccini (1771–1844), depicting the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche.3