English Romanticist painter J.M.W.
Turner's sublime 1839 rendering of an unexcavated Roman Forum
goes on display Tuesday at the Capitoline Museums for its
first-ever showing in the Eternal City, through June 19 as part
of the exhibition Campidoglio: Myth, Memory, Archaeology.
Turner's painting, titled Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, is
on loan from the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
The exhibition is a broad retrospective of the changes that
have taken place on the Capitoline Hill up through the 19th
century, as seen through the eyes of artists who captured it as
it evolved.
Curated by Alberto Danti and Claudio Parisi Presicce, the
show draws partly on documents and artistic works from the
Capitoline Museum's archives, such as frescos from the noble
palace of the Caffarelli family, who lived on the Capitoline
Hill in the 1500s.
Six sections divide the exhibition into thematic
components, like the Mythical and Romantic Vision that European
artists and literary figures expressed in their works featuring
the Capitoline Hill.
Turner's painting is one example of this vision of the city
he captured with his brush over the course of 20 years, and was
completed 10 years after his last visit.
The work showcases his view from a window in Palazzo
Senatorio on Capitoline Hill and shows the entire area of the
Roman Forum as if immersed in a veil of memory, among Baroque
churches and ancient ruins that seem to nearly dissolve in the
golden light of a fading sunset.
Also of note at the exhibition are etchings by 18th-century
Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, which show a view
quite similar to that of Turner, but with stronger chiaroscuro
contrasts than the dreamy, liquid-light vision of the British
painter.
There are also early 19th-century etchings by Piranesi's
artistic successor, the Italian artist Luigi Rossini.
Going back to the early 1700s, the exhibition also offers
up the work of architect and engraver Filippo Juvarra, whose pen
and watercolor work shows the Capitoline and Ara Coeli in 1709.
The show also boasts three recently rediscovered plaster
models of the area, as well as archaeological finds from the
excavations of 2008-2014, which shed new light on the Temple of
Jupiter.
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