“Sexta Luna”

Abstract

Let us look once more at Turner’s picture The Golden Bough of 1834. To the left of the canvas and bathed in sunshine a robed woman holds aloft a sprig of mistletoe, while from her right hand hangs a sickle. Behind her rises an escarpment, halfway up which a pedimented Corinthian façade overlooks a lake shrouded in mist in a deep declivity to her left. On the slopes rising from the lake, recreations are in progress: a circle of figures gambol to the woman’s left while immediately in front of her, and beneath a tall Italian pine to the far side, two women feast on victuals spread before them on the grass. Beyond them and into the far distance stretch turreted buildings dissolving out of sight. The whole scene is irradiated with that mellow light which Turner seems to have discovered in Italy.