Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino

Ancient Rome shimmers in a golden haze while goatherds go about their day among the ruins. Painted in 1839, this was Turner's last painting of the city he had returned to for twenty years.

The story behind the painting

Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino closes a series of views of Rome that Turner painted over some twenty years. He worked from studies and sketches made on two visits to the city and completed the canvas in 1839, at the height of his career. The subject is the Roman Forum before it was excavated, then still called the Campo Vaccino, the Cow Pasture. Hugh Munro, a friend and patron of Turner, bought it from the Royal Academy exhibition that same year.

What to look for

The canvas, 91.8 by 122.6 cm, is a landscape bathed in hazy light. Look for the layers of the city: Classical, Renaissance and Baroque buildings fill the view, while the foreground is full of modern life, including goatherds. The old stones and the everyday people share the same glowing air, so the past seems to dissolve into the present. Sotheby's noted in 2010 that the painting was in immaculate condition.

Meaning and intent

One of Turner's main themes here is the rise and fall of civilizations. Calling the picture Modern Rome while showing a cow pasture on top of the ancient Forum, he set the grandeur of empire beside the plain life that grew over its ruins. The title invites you to see both at once: what was lost and what simply carried on. The haze that softens every edge makes the scene feel like a memory as much as a view, a farewell from a painter who would not paint the city again.

Legacy

In 1878 the 5th Earl of Rosebery and his wife Hannah Rothschild bought the painting on their honeymoon, and for a century it hung at Mentmore Towers and their London homes. From 1978 it was lent to the National Gallery of Scotland. A descendant sold it at auction in London on 7 July 2010, where it set a new auction record for Turner; the J. Paul Getty Museum was the buyer. The British government placed a temporary export bar, calling the work of outstanding aesthetic importance, but no British museum matched the bid, and in February 2011 the Getty received the export licence to bring it to Los Angeles.