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The world's greatest art collections have lent works not seen in Britain for decades as part of a blockbuster show highlighting JMW Turner's debt to the Old Masters.
Tate Britain has pulled off a feat that has long defeated other curators of bringing together masterpieces by Turner with works by the likes of Rembrandt and Titian, against whom he repeatedly tested his own talents.
The new show includes about a hundred works showing Turner's efforts to copy and surpass the artistic geniuses that went before him. The exhibition in many cases pairs his own works with his influences for the first time.
It also demonstrates the competition he had with the rivals of his day, notably John Constable.
The Mill, a landscape by Rembrandt, which is being lent from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, has not been seen in Europe since 1899.
One of Turner's views of Venice, which is coming from a private collection, has not been seen in a British gallery for just short of a century.
Ian Warrell, the curator, said: "It has always been recognised that Turner owed so much to the Old Masters, but the prospect of an exhibition was always too daunting." The Tate started by talking to the National Gallery in London to secure key loans of works by Claude Lorrain and Rembrandt as well as Turner. This was followed by talks with the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid, which are lending works hardly ever allowed out of their collections.
Mr Warrell said: "The Louvre almost never lends Winter, The Deluge by Poussin. We had to twist their arm to persuade them. And the Prado never lends Veronese's The Finding of Moses. It is the first time. But there was this recognition that it's a really important show for the understanding of Turner, that sense that he looks back as well as talking to the modern." Other rare loans include The Virgin and Child by Titian and Canaletto's The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day from the Royal Collection and other works from Japan and America.
Turner could be bold in taking on the Old Masters, Mr Warrell said, and he often holds his own even in cases when that could not have been predicted.
"Everyone assumes that pairing Turner with Titian would be a walkover for Titian but in our pairing it's quite a dramatic confrontation," he added.
Turner and the Masters, supported by McKinsey & Co, opens on Wednesday and runs until 31 January.
