The Fifth Plague of Egypt, part III, plate 16, from Liber Studiorum

J. M. W. Turner's Liber Studiorum (1807-19) is modeled on 17th century artist Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis (1635-82), a visual record Claude drew of his paintings before they left his studio. Claude's famous Liber Veritatis was engraved in mezzotint in the 1770s, and it was these prints that inspired Turner to plan his ambitious Liber Studiorum. Although only 71 of Turner's prints were completed, more than 100 were planned to illustrate six landscape categories: Historical, Mountainous, Marine, Architectural, Pastoral, and Epic or Elevated Pastoral. Taken as a whole, Turner's Liber Studiorum was both an assertion of landscape as a serious art form and a profoundly influential visual treatise for generations of artists.