Turner's £50m Rome view goes on show in Rome ahead of December sale

A view of Rome painted almost 190 years ago is back in the city it depicts — with a £50 million price tag attached.

J.M.W. Turner's Rome, from Mount Aventine, dated 1836, went on show at the Palazzo Rondinini in Rome for a three-day exhibition. The display sets up its next appearance in the saleroom.

Sotheby's, the international auction house, will offer the painting in London in its Old Masters and 19th-century evening auction on 9 December. It is expected to fetch around £50 million, according to The Art Newspaper. That would beat its own record.

In 2014 the same canvas sold at Sotheby's in London for £30,322,500, price including fees — the hammer price, the winning bid called by the auctioneer, plus charges paid by the buyer. It had carried an estimate, the auction house's pre-sale guide price, of £15–£20 million. The result set Turner's auction record.

The picture is a broad panoramic view of the Italian capital, reported by the BBC. It is painted in oil on canvas and measures 92.7 by 125.7 cm. It is unlined, meaning it has never been backed with a second canvas for support, and is listed by Sotheby's as remaining on its original canvas and in its original frame, with no recorded restoration.

It was painted for Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, Turner's friend and patron. In 1878 Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, bought it as a wedding gift for his marriage to Hannah de Rothschild, then the wealthiest woman in Britain. It changed hands only once after that, selling in 2014 into a private collection. It is one of few Turner works still in private hands, according to The Guardian.

The Rome viewing runs until 1 October. After that the painting will travel to Sotheby's galleries in London, Hong Kong and New York before returning to the company's New Bond Street gallery in London ahead of the December sale. Sotheby's says the Rome stop makes it the most valuable work ever shown by an auction house in Italy.

For anyone hoping to stand in front of it, the window is short. Turner visited Rome twice. This tour offers a rare public viewing of a privately held work before it returns to the saleroom.