Claude Lorrain

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Claude Lorrain
Seaport by Claude Lorrain
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Seaport by Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain (Lorraine, c1604 - Rome, November 23, 1682) was a French painter, active in 17th century Italy, and considered a great Baroque landscape painters.

He was born of very poor parents at the village of Chamagne in Lorraine. His actual name was Claude Gellée, but is better known by the province in which he was born. Orphan by age of twelve, he went to live at Freiburg with an elder brother, Jean Gele, a wood-carver. He afterwards went to Rome to seek a livelihood; then to Naples, to apprentice for 2 years under Godfrey Waals. He returned to Rome, in April 1625 and apprenticed with the now-infamous Augustin Tassi. He apparently was able to tour in Italy, France and Germany, including his native Lorraine, suffering numerous misadventures. Karl Dervent, painter to the duke of Lorraine, kept him as assistant for a year; and at Nancy he painted architectural subjects on the ceiling of the Carmelite church.

Mature works

In 1627 returned to Rome. Here, two landscapes made for Cardinal Bentivoglio earned him the patronage of Pope Urban VIII. From about 1637, he rapidly rose into celebrity as a painter of landscapes and seascapes. He apparently befriended fellow-Frenchman Nicolas Pouissan, and together they would travel the Roman Campagna sketching landscape ideas. Though both have been called landscape painters, in Poussin the landscape is secondary background to the large figures. For Lorraine, despite the tiny figurines busy with mythic or biblical actions in some corner of the canvas- the land, sea, and air are the subjects of the painting.

By report, he often engaged other artists to paint them for him, including Courtois and Filippo Lauri. Indeed, he was wont to remark to those purchasing his pictures that he sold them the landscape, and the figures were gratis.

In order to avoid a repetition of the same subject, and also to detect the very numerous spurious copies of his works, he made tinted outline drawings (in six paper books prepared for this purpose) of all those pictures which were transmitted to different countries; and on the back of each drawing he wrote the name of the purchaser. These books he named Libri di yenta. This valuable work has been engraved and published, and has always been highly esteemed by students of the art of landscape. Claude, suffered much from gout, died in Rome at the age of eighty-two, on the 21 November or perhaps 23 November 1682, leaving his wealth, which was considerable, between his only surviving relatives, a nephew and an adopted daughter (possibly his niece).

Critical Assessment and Legacy

Until the mid-1600s, landscape painting was not esteemed a subject fit for serious painters in Rome. While, Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Bril, had made such views pre-eminent is some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings[1] or Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute, not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape begin to become the focus of a canvas painted by a major Italian artist. Even in the latter two, as for Lorraine's output, the stated theme of the paintings was mythic or religious. Landscape painting as a subject has a definitive non-classic and secular thematic. The first quality is not consonant Renaissance art which often vaingloriously claimed to aim to meet the skill of the noble 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, edges into "art for art's sake" mindset, and lacks moral compass. The theologic and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art was not entirely ready for that.

In this fashion, Lorraine is prescient. He paints in a pre-romantic era and does not depict the uninhabited panoramas that that later century would esteem. He paints the partially tamed world of pastoral fields and valleys bordering castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it starts from a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings whose subject was high themes, his paintings always include tiny demigods or heroes, the fine print of biblical or mythic events, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove he was crucially centered on the scenography.

Lorraine works are found in National Gallery, London; Louvre, Paris; the Altieri and Colonna palaces, Rome; Villa Madama, being a cento of various views with great abundance and variety of leafage, and a composition of "Esther and Ahasuerus". He etched a series of twenty-eight landscapes, fine impressions of which are greatly prized.

Claude, by report, was kind to his pupils, hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man till his death. This painter Standart 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).

Partial Anthology of Works

  • 1. Landscape with Goatherd, 1636, National Gallery, London.
  • 2. Port with Villa Medici, 1637, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
  • 3. Finding of Moses, 1638. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
  • 4. Seaport at Sunset (Odysseus), (1639, Musée du Louvre, Paris).[2]
  • 5. Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana at Ostia, 1639, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
  • 6. The Embarkation of St. Ursula, (1641, National Gallery, London) [3]
  • 7. The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus, 1642, canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
  • 8. The Judgement of Paris, 1645-46, National Gallery of Art at Washington D.C.
  • 9. Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, (1648, National Gallery, London) [4]
  • 10. View of La Crescenza, 1648-50, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
  • 11. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, detail, 1651 or 1661, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
  • 12. The Trojan Women Setting Fire to their Fleet, (Metropolitan Museum, NY). *13. The Departure of Hagar and Ishmael, 1668,Pinakothek at Munich.
  • 14. Seaport, 1674, Pinakothek at Munich.
  • 15. Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Silvia, 1682, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
  • 16. Brook and Two Bridges
  • 17. Voyage of Jacob
  • 18. Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1641, National Gallery, London) [5]
  • 19. The Angel's Visit
  • 20. Landscape with Merchants, (The Shipwreck) (1630, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.)[6]
  • 21. View of the Church Santa Trinita Del Monte (drawing), (Hermitage, St. Petersburg)[7]
  • 22. Landscape with Cephalus and Procris reunited by Diana ,(1645, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.)[8]
  • 23. Seaport (1639, National Gallery, London) [9]
  • 24, Mercury Stealing Apollo's Oxen, (1672)[10]
  • 25View of Campagna (1644, Royal Collections)[11]
  • 26Landscape with a dance (The Marriage of Isaac and Rebeccah (drawing), (1663)[12]
  • 27The Ford, (1636, Metropolitan Museum, NY) [13]
  • 28Sunrise, (1646-7, Metropolitan Museum, NY) [14]
  • 29View of La Crescenza, (1648-50, Metropolitan Museum, NY) [15]
  • 30 View of Tivoli at Sunset, (1644, San Frncisco Museum of Art) [16]
  • 31 Pastoral Landscape, (1638, Minneapolis Institute of Arts)[17]
  • 32 Seaport with Castle (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.) [18]
  • 33 Landscape with Acis And GalateaItalic text (1657)[19]
  • 34 Oaktree drawing [20]


See also Victor Cousin, Sur Claude Gele (1853); MF Sweetser, Claude Lorrain (1878); Lady Dilke, Claude Lorrain (1884).


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This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain.

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