Palestrina, composition

Turner painted this in Rome in 1828, on his second long stay in Italy, working from a borrowed studio near the Spanish Steps. It was meant for his great patron Lord Egremont, who wanted something to hang beside a landscape by the 17th-century master Claude Lorrain at his house in Sussex. So Turner gave him an imagined Italy in Claude's own key, golden light, a river winding past umbrella pines and the hill town of Palestrina glowing in the distance. Shipping delays kept it from London until 1830. In the end Egremont never bought it, and years later Turner sold the picture for 1000 guineas to a whaling magnate who collected his work.