J.M.W. Turner’s monumental 1836 canvas Rome, From Mount Aventine has made a rare, three-day return to the Italian capital. Estimated at £50 million ahead of a December 9 auction at Sotheby’s London, the masterpiece retains its original canvas, frame, and unlined surface complete with the artist’s fingerprints.
A Fleeting Return to the Eternal City
Nearly two centuries after its creation, Rome, from Mount Aventine has journeyed back to the Palazzo Rondinini in central Rome for a brief public exhibition running from Tuesday through Thursday. The canvas presents a sweeping, panoramic view of the Italian capital as seen from the Aventine Hill, capturing the winding Tiber River, St. Peter’s, the Roman Forum, the Palatine, the Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum under a hazy dawn light.
Commissioned originally by Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar—an amateur British artist and friend who accompanied Turner on his sketching tours—the work draws on five studies made during the painter’s second Italian stay between 1828 and 1829. Julian Gascoigne, Sotheby’s senior specialist in British paintings, noted during a press preview that unlike other Italian subjects where Turner evoked a bygone age, this specific canvas stands as his great love letter to the city that inspired him throughout his life.
Remarkable Preservation and Technical Mastery
The extraordinary valuation of the piece stems in large part from its pristine physical condition. Over its 191-year history, the painting has never undergone relining or restoration, remaining fixed on its original stretcher and housed within its original frame.
Because the surface remains unlined, experts point out that viewers can examine the delicate glazes of translucent paint applied with watercolorist techniques in oil. Gascoigne explained to AFP that this distinct application of translucent layers directly inspired later artists such as Monet, the French Impressionists, and Mark Rothko. Close inspection reveals the teeth of brushes, the scrape of palette knives, and individual brush hairs caught in the wet paint, alongside physical fingerprints left by Turner as he shifted the canvas around his studio.
Historical Provenance and Market Records
After Turner completed the work in London and exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1836 to mixed reviews, the painting remained within Munro’s estate until 1878. That year, Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery and future British prime minister, purchased it for 6,142 pounds as a wedding gift for his bride, Hannah de Rothschild, who was recognized as one of the wealthiest women in Britain at the time.
The masterpiece stayed in the Rosebery family collection for over a century before coming to auction at Sotheby’s London in 2014. During that sale, a private collector acquired the painting for £30.3 million (equivalent to $47.6 million), which established the auction record for any work by the artist. Sotheby’s notes that the painting has changed hands only twice across its entire history.
Global Exhibition Tour Before the December Sale
Following its three-day showcase at the baroque Palazzo Rondinini—marking the most valuable artwork ever exhibited by a major auction house in Italy—the painting will embark on an international tour. Sotheby’s plans to display the canvas in Hong Kong, capitalizing on strong Asian client interest in Turner, and in New York, which holds a substantial base of American collectors, before returning it to London.
When the masterpiece goes under the hammer during the Old Masters and 19th-century evening auction at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries on December 9, it is expected to achieve around £50 million ($66 million to $67 million). Mario Tavella, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, expressed hope that the piece might ultimately enter a public museum where it could be admired by everyone.