Joseph Mallard William Turner (1812). Snowstorm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps. The Tate Gallery, London.

Turner provides a photo-realistic fantasy snapshot of a perilous moment Hannibal’s army endured in their crossing of the Alps. The tone leaves an impression of danger and gives the observer a glimpse of their own mortality. This impression would not be as potent if the composition weren’t so stable in its formal arrangement. This masterpiece tells a story, impacts the observer, documents a straddled moment in time and demonstrates carefully considered design principles.

Value binds and energizes the canvas. At its most basic level a horizontally-oriented field of light, washed-out tone is vertically bracketed by two dark fields. It is aggressively penetrated by a monstrous mass of dense weather, coiling to attack the mountainside. This demonstrates beautiful contrasts in value, form geometry and figurative versus natural forces, the power of which is so great it seems to drain all color off the canvas, leaving behind dying, smoky browns and grays.

The plastic development of forms and their illusionistically-realistic rendering builds this work’s masterful pictorial depth. Transparency usually creates tight gestalt relationships, but not in this case. The snowstorm’s power to dim the sun, in combination with its overwhelming size and coiled form, clearly communicate its mindless, malevolent power. It’s sharp contrast in value from the far-background create the impression of a distant spatial relationship between the two, supported by Turner’s calibration of detail.

Directional forces swirl upward into the upper canvas, poised in a moment of gathering strength. Right-to-left motion is steady, slow, and passive along the bottom edge. There, two moments are communicated: What is about to happen at lower-right where a gesture of panic is found, and to the left where the only defined forms are found. The impression of danger is underscored by Turner’s placement of the observer in the formation. This anticipation of violence poised a moment before attacking throws the composition off-balance, in spite of, or perhaps enhanced by, its formal, value- and purity-based, stability.

One of the themes of a work such as Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good Government is that mankind’s self-determination requires it to bring order and efficiency to nature. This message is turned on its head in works such as Gericault’s Raft of the “Medusa” and this. Turner could possibly be comparing Hannibal to Napoleon, who in his attempted conquest of Europe crossed the Alps but, like Hannibal, was destined for failure.