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 :. | landscape with ascanius shooting the stag of sylvia | Landscape with Dancing Figures dfgdf | Christmas Procession at S.Maria Maggiore,Rome (mk17) | Landscape with Abraham Expelling Hagar and Ishmael (mk17) | David Slaying Goliath (mk17) |
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marin mersenne
French mathematician,philosopher and theorist. One of the leading French thinkers of the 17th century, he lived in Paris from 1619 as a Jesuit priest. His work is central to the academic and scientific movements of his time, and a major part of it is devoted to music. On the basis of practical experiment and observations, he made important discoveries concerning the nature and behaviour of sound, which are the foundation of the science of acoustics in later times. He also wrote on the theory and practice of music. His principal musical treatise is the Harmonie universelle
Richard Redgrave,RA
1804-1888 Painter, etcher and administrator, brother of (1) Samuel Redgrave. He trained initially as a clerk and draughtsman in his father's counting-house before becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools in 1826; he also studied with John Powell. About 1830 he left his father's firm and supported himself as a drawing-master, working in watercolour before attempting to paint in oil. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1825 until failing eyesight afflicted him in 1883. He was elected ARA in 1840 and RA in 1851.
Palmer, Pauline
American, 1867-1938