The Modernists that Rome made

The city of Rome confronted and confronts visitors from abroad with a multiplicity of layers. There were and still are ancient ruins like the Colosseum, visible in the past and today; the antiquities that continued to be discovered throughout the modern period; and the living city and its residents. This multiple time frame had a profound influence on many of the artists who came to Rome. The superimposed temporalities made simple narrative painting impossible. In their attempts to find ways of accommodating that time frame, some artists – Nicolas Poussin, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, J.M.W. Turner among others – hit upon compositional techniques that, with hindsight, we now associate with Modernism. This study aims to shift the discussion of Modernism away from the conventional Paris-New York axis to throw light on the other modernists.

PETER MASON British-Italian author Peter Mason studied Literæ Humaniores at the University of Oxford and has lectured widely on the history of art and visual culture in Europe and the Americas. He has been visiting professor in Santiago de Chile and Madrid. Among his recent publications are The Colossal. From Ancient Greece to Giacometti (2013), The Ways of the World. European representations of other cultures from Homer to Sade (2015) and El Drago en el Jardín del Edén (2018). He lives in Rome.