| The Golden Bough | |
|---|---|
_The_Golden_Bough_-_Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_-_Tate_Britain.jpg) | |
| Artist | J. M. W. Turner |
| Year | 1834 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 104.1 cm × 163.8 cm (41.0 in × 64.5 in) |
| Location | Tate Gallery,London |
| Accession | N00371 |
| Website | tate |
The Golden Bough is a painting from 1834 by the English painterJ. M. W. Turner. It depicts the episode ofthe golden bough from theAeneid byVirgil. It is in the collection of theTate galleries.
John Ruskin describedThe Golden Bough as a sequel to Turner's 1823 paintingThe Bay of Baiae, which is based on the myth ofApollo and theCumaean Sibyl.[1]
The painting depicts a scene from book VI of the ancient Roman epicAeneid byVirgil. Turner has usedChristopher Pitt's English translation.[2] The heroAeneas wants to enter theUnderworld to consult his dead father. TheSibyl ofCumae tells him that he needs to offer agolden bough from a sacred tree toProserpine in order to enter. The painting shows the landscape around the lakeAvernus, which is the entrance to the Underworld. The Sibyl stands to the left and holds a sickle and the cut bough. DancingFates in the background and a snake in the foreground forebode the mysteries of the Underworld.[3]
The collectorRobert Vernon bought the painting before it had been exhibited publicly. It was shown at theRoyal Academy of Arts in 1834. Vernon gave it to theNational Gallery in 1847, and in 1929 it was transferred to theTate Gallery.[2] It remains in the collection of theTate galleries, but as of 2020 was not on display.[3]
James George Frazer evokes the painting in his bookThe Golden Bough (1890), which speculatively reconstructs a mental image which according to Frazer connects many myths and religious practices. The book would go on to influence many writers. Turner's painting serves as itsfrontispiece and is addressed in the opening paragraph:
Who does not know Turner's picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of imagination in which the divine mind of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodlandlake of Nemi, "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palazzo whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Dian herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild.[4]
