Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino

The ancient Roman Forum - long a cattle pasture known as the Campo Vaccino - lies bathed in a golden, dissolving haze, its broken columns and arches melting into luminous air as small figures move among the ruins. Turner painted this late view of Rome as a meditation on time and glory, the solid stones of empire almost evaporating into light. Now at the Getty, Modern Rome shows his mature obsession with atmosphere over substance, the grandeur of the past rendered as a shimmering, melancholy radiance rather than archaeological fact.