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 :. | Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia | Landscape with Aeneas on Delos (mk17) | Landscape Pen drawing and wash (mk17) | Landscape with Sheep (mk17) | The Trojan Women Set Fire to their Fleet |
Related Artists:
askevold
Anders Monsen Askevold was born in Askvoll, Norway in 1834. His early training started at the age of thirteen in Bergen under Hans Leganger Reuch. He trained in Dusseldorf under Professor Hans Gude from 1855 until 1859. and he is known as a member of the Dusseldorf school with others like Adelsteen Normann. From 1861 to 1866 he was in Paris. After this he moved back to Dusseldorf where he would spend his winters in Germany and his summers in Norway. Askevold did some commissions for churches in Norway. He died in 1900 in Dusseldorf.
simon luttichuys
ca 1630-1640
Carlo Francesco Nuvolone
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1609-1662 was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Lombardy. He was born in Milan to an Cremonese father and mannerist painter, Panfilo Nuvolone. After working with his father, he studied under Giovanni Battista Crespi (il Cerano) in the Accademia Ambrosiana in Milan. In that studio he would have encountered Daniele Crespi and Giulio Cesare Procaccini. Of particular interest is his depiction of himself as a painter surrounded by his family of artists