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 Figures Before (mk17) | Seaport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula | Landscape with a the Penitent Magdalen | Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba df | Details of The Sermon on the mount |
Related Artists:
Hans Gude
March 13, 1825 ?C August 17, 1903,Norwegian painter. He was the most renowned Norwegian landscape painter of his time. At the age of 12 he was enrolled as a pupil of Johannes Flintoe (1787-1880). After attending evening classes at the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, he went to D?sseldorf in 1841 to study privately with the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910). In 1842 Gude was admitted to the landscape class at the Akademie under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He was later appointed an assistant teacher at Schirmer private studio, and he succeeded his master as Professor of landscape painting both at the D?sseldorf Akademie (1854-62) and at the Karlsruhe Akademie (1864-80). In the 1840s Gude established his reputation in Norway and on the Continent with powerful images of the Norwegian mountains. These were shown in the Kunstforening galleries in D?sseldorf and Christiania and at the Berliner Akademische Kunstausstellung, where Gude exhibited throughout his life. Adolph Tidemand and Gude dominated the colony of Norwegian artists who studied in D?sseldorf in the mid-19th century. The two artists worked together on five paintings, all representing people in boats; Gude painted the landscape, Tidemand the figures. The Bridal Procession at Hardanger (1848; Oslo, N.G.) celebrates a ceremony of country life and is the most famous work of Norwegian National Romanticism. In a sunny western Norwegian landscape with snow on the high mountains, the bridal couple and wedding guests in national costume are shown rowing across the water from a medieval stave church on the headland in the background. Gude revealed greater maturity in High Mountain (1857; Oslo, N.G.). The disposition of mountains massed on the high plateau around a little lake produces an effect of monumentality. The predominant colours shade from grey to blue, concentrated in the cloud cover. The influence of Schirmer tranquil landscapes is apparent, while the rhythmic arrangement of light and shadow is reminiscent of Achenbach.
Ludolf Backhuysen
b.Dec. 18, 1631, Emden, East Frisia [Germany] d.Nov. 17, 1708, Amsterdam, Neth. Dutch Ludolf Backhuysen Gallery
CASTELLO, Valerio
Italian painter, Genoese school (b. 1624, Genova, d. 1659, Genova) Painter and draughtsman, son of Bernardo Castello. He was one of the leading Ligurian painters of the 17th century, whose art developed from a continuous and passionate study of a wide range of sources. His paintings of mythological and religious subjects unite an elegant figure style with an interest in dramatic and violent compositions; his touch is spontaneous and his palette vibrant with reds and pinks, blues and yellows. His brilliant decorative frescoes introduced the splendour of the High Baroque to Genoese painters. He was well known for his rapid oil sketches, with light and lively brushwork, which anticipate aspects of the Rococo.