1809

Exhibited in 1809 at Turner’s own Gallery, this is one of the grandest and most successful of all his exercises in transporting his vision of the classical world to Britain. It depicts an imaginary view across the Thames at Twickenham, and is a tribute to the work of the Scottish poet James Thomson (1700 - 48).

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 166.7 x 306 cm
• Manchester Art Gallery

c.1817

Turner created impressive illustrations for James Hakewill’s A Picturesque Tour of Italy (1820). This view shows a stunning eruption of Vesuvius, which floods the image with orange and golden light. Turner never was in fact to see such an event, but the prospect of natural wonders of this sort would have spurred him on to tour Italy.

• Material: Watercolour on paper
• Size: 17.6 x 28.4 cm
• Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead

1820

This spectacular picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy, following Turner’s first visit to Rome in 1819. It encapsulates his reactions to the splendour and artistic heritage of the city. Turner’s painting was created on the three-hundredth anniversary of Raphael’s death and he depicted Raphael in the foreground, glancing at his frescoes above, accompanied by his mistress, La Fornarina.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 117 x 335.5 cm
• Tate, London

1827

Adopting a high viewpoint was an approach Turner employed for many of his city views. It was ideal for conveying a sense of scale and civic grandeur and encouraging comparison with maps and plans, so that buildings might be identified. This view of Florence was based on sketches made in 1819 and proved so popular that Turner created four versions of it.

• Material: Watercolour on paper
• Size: 29 x 42.5 cm
• Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry

1828

Vision of Medea was one of the most ambitious and unusual of Turner’s works painted and exhibited in Rome in 1828. As a figurative picture, of a type he rarely attempted, it must have been inspired in part by the grand history paintings – narratives from myth and literature – he could study in Italy.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 173.5 x 241 cm
• Tate, London

1839

This picture was painted by Turner as a contrast to a work now in the Tate, which features a reconstruction of ancient Rome. In Modern Rome the fabric of the past has crumbled, and we are shown an anthology of spectacular ruins, interspersed with Baroque churches; goats are milked in the foreground, and a tiny figure, perhaps an archaeologist, ascends a ladder to study a column at the right.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 90.2 x 122 cm
• Private Collection, on loan to the National Gallery of Scotland

1840

In 1840 Turner stayed in Venice on the third floor of the Palazzo Giustiniani, near the entrance to the Grand Canal, and made his room the subject of this fascinating work, one of the most original of all his Venetian studies. Turner would have used this room as a temporary studio for working on his watercolours of the city.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 23 x 30.2 cm
• Tate, London

1844

This major painting was created in Turner’s London studio; it shows the city almost as a mirage, hovering between sea and sky. It sent Turner’s great champion, the critic John Ruskin, into ecstasies: ‘…it was, I think, when I first saw it, the most perfectly beautiful piece of colour of all that I have seen produced by human hands, by any means, or at any period.’

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 62 x 94 cm
• National Gallery of Art, Washington

1840-50

The traditional title of this late work connects it with key moments in his relationship with Italy – his 1802 visit to Aosta, when he first visited the country, and his 1836 journey through the Val d’Aosta with his good friend Monro of Novar. These seminal experiences are perhaps recalled here in a wholly original, visionary work.

• Material: Oil on canvas
• Size: 91.4 x 121.9cm
• The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the Government of Victoria and donations from Associated Securities Limited, the Commonwealth Government (through the Australia Council), the National Gallery Society of Victoria, the National Art Collections Fund (Great Britain), The Potter Foundation and other organisations, the Myer family and the people of