ROME.- Today, within the richly adorned walls of Rome’s baroque Palazzo Rondinini, Sotheby’s unveils J.M.W. Turner’s masterpiece Rome, from Mount Aventine (1836) – a painting that ranks among the very greatest of Turner’s late works, and one of very few paintings of this calibre remaining in private hands. On the last occasion that canvas changed hands it established a new benchmark price for the artist’s work. This December, when the painting comes to auction at Sotheby’s London with an estimate in the region of £50 million, it is set to do the same again.

With its three-day exhibition now at the Palazzo Rondinini in Rome (29 September to 1 October), the painting will become the most valuable work of art ever exhibited by any auction house in Italy. Whilst it is believed that the picture was conceived, mapped out and the design committed to canvas in Italy, it is thought to have been completed back in London some time later, so this historic exhibition marks the triumphant return of this spectacular evocation of Rome to the city where it all began.

First commissioned by Turner’s close friend and patron Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, the painting later caught the eye of Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery and future British Prime Minister, who saw it as the perfect wedding gift to celebrate his marriage to Hannah de Rothschild – then the wealthiest woman in the country. He purchased the work from the sale of Munro’s estate in 1878 for £6,142 (by far the highest price paid for one of the pictures in the sale).

Since then, the painting has changed hands just once. When it came to auction at Sotheby’s in 2014, consigned direct from the Rosebery family, it achieved £30.3 million / $47.6 million – establishing a new auction record for the artist which still stands some twelve years later.

This continuity of ownership explains, in large part, one other remarkable aspect of the painting: its extraordinary state of preservation. Remaining on its original canvas and in its original frame, the painting has never in its 191-year history been relined or restored. Its surface retains an astonishing freshness, as though it has come straight from the artist’s easel. Turner’s fingerprints, every scrape of his palette knife, and the hairs of his brush caught in the wet paint have all been preserved in remarkable detail.





“Few paintings capture Turner’s genius as vividly and completely as this extraordinary vision of Rome’s timeless beauty. Created at the height of his powers, it is a work of extraordinary ambition, beauty and innovation, one that has come to define not only Turner’s achievement but the very course of modern painting. Turner’s influence is immeasurable. Almost every artist who has taken up a brush since Turner owes something to his vision, and his influence on the development of modern art remains unmatched. Similarly, few cities have influenced art and culture as much as Rome. It is a true career highlight to be able to bring this defining masterpiece to the city that inspired its creation almost two centuries ago.” -- JULIAN GASCOIGNE, SENIOR SPECIALIST, BRITISH PAINTINGS, SOTHEBY’S LONDON
 
THE FIRST ‘MODERN’ PAINTER

Rome, from Mount Aventine is not only the culmination of J.M.W. Turner’s lifelong fascination with the Eternal City, but also one of the most powerful expressions of the audacious experimentation that characterises the greatest achievements of the artist’s late career, underpinning his transformative influence on the future trajectory of art.

Frequently described as the first ‘modern’ painter, Turner defied the artistic conventions of his age, transforming the possibilities of painting through a radical exploration of light, colour and atmosphere, directly inspiring the Impressionist painters who followed him, and presaging the abstract expressionism of the twentieth century.

“The evolution of Turner as an artist, particularly during the final fifteen years of his life, fundamentally informed the course of modern art – permanently changing the way painting could be conceived and experienced. Through daring experiments in colour, increasingly fluid forms and an unprecedented treatment of light, he revolutionised perceptions of both the painted image and the very nature of representation itself. Applying the techniques of a watercolourist to oil painting, he built luminous surfaces through successive layers of translucent pigment, infusing his canvases with a radiant, atmospheric glow of remarkable emotional depth. Rome, from Mount Aventine belongs to this extraordinary period of artistic innovation.” -- OLIVER BARKER, CHAIRMAN, SOTHEBY’S EUROPE
 
PRECISION AND POETRY

One of the most distinguished collectors of his generation, Munro was an amateur artist who travelled on sketching tours with Turner, and would later become his executor. When he commissioned this work, he requested a view of modern Rome that would encompass both the city’s daily life and its ancient grandeur. His great friend Turner did not disappoint. Though the painting is based on five exceptionally detailed studies made during his transformative second visit to Rome in 1828-29, it was not executed as a straightforward transcription. Instead, working with “the precision of a surveyor and the sensitivity of a poet” (Julian Gascoigne), Turner distilled his observations into a profoundly personal and evocative vision of the city that ranks among the most ambitious and poetic images of Rome in the history of art.

When Rome, from Mount Aventine was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1836, it immediately became one of the most discussed works of the exhibition. Contemporary opinion was divided, yet its supporters recognised its exceptional achievement. Writing on 3 May 1836, The Morning Post hailed it as “one of those amazing pictures by which Mr Turner dazzles the imagination and confounds all criticism: it is beyond praise.”
 
THE SYMBOLISM OF TURNER’S ROME

Rome captured the artist’s heart and imagination more than any other city that he visited. Bathed in the golden light of dawn, Turner’s Rome is both luminous and strikingly modern, whilst also capturing the city’s unmistakeably ancient quality. The ancient Ponte Emilio anchors the centre of the composition, while landmarks including St Peter’s Basilica, the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the Circus Maximus and, in the far distance, the Colosseum, unfold across the horizon. A majestic umbrella pine rises above the skyline, dominating the scene, while the bustling waterfront of the Ripa Grande and the Ospizio di San Michele evoke the rhythm of life in full flow along the river.

Beyond its picturesque beauty, the painting also reflects Turner’s longstanding interest in ideas of liberty, national identity and cultural regeneration. Rome in Turner’s day was the cradle of western civilisation and the centre of the European art world from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It was the Holy Grail for artists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here, Turner shows us Rome that is once again – after the ravages and disruptions of the Napoleonic wars - a vibrant centre for artists, merchants and travellers, viewed from a site, the Aventine Hill, that had long been closely associated with notions of liberty in ancient Rome.