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 :. | Dance (mk17) | The Campo Vaccino, Rome dfg | Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt | The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus | St Peter's,Rome (mk17) |
Related Artists:
Claude Deruet
(1588-1660) was a famous French Baroque painter of the 17th century, from the city of Nancy. Deruet was an apprentice to Jacques Bellange, the official court painter to Charles III, Duke of Lorraine. He was in Rome between ca. 1612 and 1619, where - according to Andre Felibien - he studied with the painter and etcher Antonio Tempesta. During his stay in Rome, he painted the Japanese samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga on a visit to Europe in 1615. Deruet was made a noble by the Duke of Lorraine in 1621, and was then made a Knight of the Order of St Michel in 1645 by Louis XIII, who had in 1641 absorbed most of Lorraine into France. He had a luxurious residence in Nancy, named La Romaine, where Louis XIII and his Queen stayed in 1633. Claude Lorrain was an apprentice to Claude Deruet in 1623 for one year. He also married and had two sons, one of whom became a painter.
Mattheus Ignatius van Bree
was a Belgian painter, sculptor and architect. He was born at Antwerp in 1773, was instructed by Regemorter; he afterwards went to Paris, and after having obtained by a 'Cato in Utica' the second prize for Rome, he went to that city in 1797e returning to his native country in 1804.[1] He painted numerous historical pictures, some of which are of large dimensions, and obtained a high reputation in Flanders. His conceptions are frequently poetical, and his compositions graceful, delineated with a light, free, and spirited pencil ; but his colouring is rather too florid in some instances. He was first professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Antwerp, and in 1827 its director. Member of several other scientific institutions like the academies of Amsterdam, Rome, Munich and New York. Among his most important works are 'The Patriotism of the Burgomaster Van der Werft,' in the Town-Hall at Leyden, and 'The Death of Rubens,' in the Museum at Antwerp. He brought forward some of the most eminent of the later Flemish painters, among whom are Wappers, De Keyser, F. de Braekeleer, and others of whom their country is justly proud. Van Bree died at Antwerp in 1839.
Demont-Breton Virginie
French Painter ,1859-Wissant 1935