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 :. | The Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Landscape with Sheep (mk17) | Landscape with Christ and the Magdalen (mk17) | Landscape with the Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Landschaft mit Apollo, den Musen und einem Flubgott |
Related Artists:
Charles Schreiber
French 1843-1903
MUR, Ramon de
Catalan painter active in first half of 14th century in Tarragona
Nasi
Italian, 19th century Born in the town of Castel del Piano, near Grossetto, Giuseppe Nicola Nasini trained under Ciro Ferri at the Accademia Medicea in Rome in the early 1680??s. He also studied at the Accademia di San Luca, where he won several prizes, and later worked extensively in Rome. In 1689 he entered the service of the Grand Duke Cosimo III de?? Medici in Florence, for whom he painted a series of four large canvases on the theme of the Last Judgement for the Salone dei Novissimi of the Palazzo Pitti, executed between 1690 and 1694. Transferred at the end of the 18th century to a church in Siena, these are now lost. In the first quarter of the 18th century Nasini painted a number of works for churches in Rome, including an altarpiece of The Madonna and Child with Saints for the Chiesa dei Re Magi in 1707, and a Baptism of Christ for San Lorenzo in Lucina, completed in 1716. In 1718 Nasini was one of twelve leading painters working in Rome (including Benedetto Luti, Francesco Trevisani, Sebastiano Conca and Pier Leone Ghezzi) who were commissioned by Pope Clement XI to paint seated prophets in the oval niches of the nave of the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano. One of Nasini??s last Roman works was a frescoed Glory of Saint Anthony for the church of SS. Apostoli, painted between 1721 and 1722. By the late 1720??s Nasini had risen to a position as the leading painter in Siena, where he headed a large and busy workshop. In such works as the decoration of the Oratorio del Crocifisso and the church of the Visitation he introduced the Baroque manner of Luca Giordano to his native city. His older brother Antonio was also a painter; the two collaborated on the decoration of the vault of the church of San Gaetano di Thiene in Siena, completed in 1734.