Golden Bough (1834) : The painting depicts a scene from book VI of the ancient Roman epic Aeneid by Virgil. Turner has used Christopher Pitt's English translation. The hero Aeneas wants to enter the Underworld to consult his dead father. The Sibyl of Cumae tells him that he needs to offer a golden bough from a sacred tree to Proserpine in order to enter. The painting shows the landscape around the lake Avernus, which is the entrance to the Underworld. The Sibyl stands to the left and holds a sickle and the cut bough. Dancing Fates in the background and a snake in the foreground forebode the mysteries of the Underworld. 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 woodland lake of Nemi, "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. *JMW (Joseph Mallord William) TURNER (1775-1851) was one of the most important English Romantic Painters of the 19th century. He is known for his expressive colourisations, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. Turner's imagination was sparked by shipwrecks, fires, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power, turbulence and tidestorms of the sea. It's said that his last words before death were, 'The Sun is God!'