A particularly well-preserved painting of Rome by the British artist William Turner went on display in the city on Tuesday for the first time ahead of an auction in December.
Rome, From Mount Aventine, which was first exhibited in 1836, has only been sold twice before and still carries the artist's fingerprints and even the hairs of his brush.
"The paint is as fresh and as three-dimensional and as rich as it was the day that he applied it to the canvas," Julian Gascoigne, Sotheby's senior specialist in British paintings, told AFP, calling it an "exceptional painting".
At the presentation in Rome's baroque Palazzo Rondinini, Gascoigne explained that the painting had never been re-lined or cleaned up and is still on the artist's original stretcher.
Turner applied the techniques of a watercolourist in oil, creating successive layers of translucent paint for a hazy effect.
"It was precisely this technique and this application of paint that so inspired artists like Monet and the French Impressionists" and later Mark Rothko, Gascoigne said.
The painting will remain on public display for three days before being shown in Hong Kong and New York ahead of the sale in London.
Sotheby's said it expected the masterpiece to sell for around 50mil pounds (RM271mil) which would break the auction record for a Turner, set by the same painting when it was last sold in 2014.
The work was commissioned by Turner's friend and patron Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar and was bought in 1878 by Archibald Primrose, 5th Early of Rosebery and future British prime minister.
It remained in the Rosebery family until 2014 when it was auctioned by Sotheby's to a private buyer for 30.3mil (RM164.1mil) pounds - a new record.
Mario Tavella, chairman of Sotheby's Europe, said he hoped it would end up in a public museum "where it could be admired by everyone".
Asked about security arrangements following a spate of high-profile art thefts across Europe, Tavelal said: "We have taken all the necessary precautions."
"We have a well-oiled system with every precaution in place to ensure that the works are completely protected, that they do not suffer any damage, and that they are not stolen." - AFP
