Aeneas and the Sibyl, Lake Avernus

Aeneas and the Sibyl, Lake Avernus from 1798 at the National Gallery is one of Turner's earliest attempts to synthesize classical mythological subject matter with landscape in the tradition of Claude Lorrain — the defining influence on his early development. Claude's harbor scenes and pastoral landscapes, saturated with golden light and peopled with classical figures, provided the model for a particular mode of elevated landscape painting that aspired to the status of history painting through its mythological and literary content. Virgil's Aeneid, which describes Aeneas's descent to the underworld guided by the Cumaean Sibyl, gave Turner a subject associated with Lake Avernus in the Phlegraean Fields near Naples — a volcanic crater lake with sulphurous springs that the ancients identified as an entrance to Hades. Turner had not yet visited Italy in 1798, working from prints and his imagination to evoke the classical landscape, but the painting demonstrates his complete command of the Claudian tradition and his instinct for the golden, atmospheric light that would become his visual signature. He would eventually see Italy in 1819 and return transformed, but this early canvas shows how deeply he had absorbed Claude from reproductions alone.

Turner renders the volcanic lake landscape with warm, golden light that pays tribute to Claude while introducing atmospheric effects of mist and smoke unique to his developing vision. The careful balance between classical composition and atmospheric experimentation reveals an artist on the threshold of his revolutionary maturity.