View of Orvieto, Painted in Rome

In the winter of 1828 Turner was on his second stay in Rome, and he did something unusual for a visiting foreigner: he rented rooms and put on his own exhibition. Roman artists came to look and mostly went away puzzled by his loose, glowing handling of light. This was one of the canvases on the wall. It shows the hill town of Orvieto, which he had passed on the road south, rebuilt from sketches and memory into a golden Italian idyll with a bridge and washerwomen in the foreground. The town here is more feeling than topography. He carried the picture back to London, reworked it in 1830, and hung it at the Royal Academy.