French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | A Seaport at Sunrise | Landscape with a Goatherd (mk17) | Dance (mk17) | Landscape with St Onofrio (mk17) | Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba |
Related Artists:
dominique peyronnet

CARRACCI, Antonio
Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1583-1618 Painter, son of Agostino Carracci. He was born either c. 1583 (Baglione) or in 1589 (Bellori). His mother was a Venetian courtesan named Isabella. After his father's death, he joined the Roman household of his uncle Annibale Carracci. While Antonio may have collaborated with other studio assistants on the wall frescoes (1603-4) of the Galleria Farnese and the decoration (1606; commissioned from Francesco Albani) of some rooms in the Palazzo Mattei di Giove, Rome, his earliest undisputed works date from after Annibale's death in 1609. At that time, according to Monsignor G. B. Agucchi (Malvasia), Antonio returned briefly to Bologna, with the intention of joining Ludovico Carracci's studio, but the proposed collaboration came to nothing. A frescoed Vision of St Francis in the lower oratory of S Colombano was most probably painted during this Bolognese sojourn, and his Burial of Christ (Rome, Gal. Borghese) dates from c. 1609. He returned to Rome in 1610 and assisted Guido Reni in the Pauline Chapel of the Palazzo del Quirinale, where he painted Virtues and other subsidiary figures on the walls.
ELSHEIMER, Adam
German Baroque Era Painter, 1578-1610 German painter, printmaker and draughtsman, active in Italy. His small paintings on copper established him after his brief life as the most singular and influential German artist to follow D?rer. Their grand conception in terms of monumental figures and poetic landscape and their meticulous, miniature-like execution were admired by Rubens and came to influence many 17th-century artists, including Rembrandt. Most were produced in Rome after 1600: