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 :. | Vedute von Delphi mit einer Opferprozession | Landscape with Aeneas on Delos (mk17) | Ascanius Shooting the Stag of Sylvia | Landscape with the Finding of Moses sdfg | View on the Capitoline Hill,Rome (mk17) |
Related Artists:
PULIGO, Domenico
Italian Painter, 1492-1527 He trained in Florence with Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and in the workshops of Antonio del Ceraiuolo ( fl 1st half 16th century) and Andrea del Sarto. What may be his earliest surviving work, the Virgin and Child with St John (c. 1513; Rome, Pal. Venezia), reflects the style of Ghirlandaio. Other early paintings, however, such as the Holy Family (Florence, Gal. Corsini), show the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto and are little affected by Ghirlandaio. The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John (c. 1522; Florence, Pitti) clearly reflects the examples of Fra Bartolommeo and Raphael, with the figures in the manner of Andrea del Sarto. The figure of the Christ Child may derive from Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks (c. 1507-8; Alnwick Castle, Northumb., on loan to London, N.G.). Over a dozen drawings have been attributed to Puligo, but none relates to his extant work or resembles his style of painting. Vasari described him as a particularly lazy artist, which may account for this scarcity of drawings and for the frequency of borrowed motifs and repeated compositions in his smaller religious paintings. Such borrowing often resulted in a lack of harmony in his compositions, as in the Pitti Virgin and Child. The influence of the more sculptural forms of Andrea del Sarto's work of the 1520s can be seen in the Mary Magdalene (c. 1525; Ottawa, N.G.).
Jan Miense Molenaer
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1610-1668 was a Dutch genre painter whose style was a precursor to Jan Steen's work during Dutch Golden Age painting. He shared a studio with his wife, Judith Leyster, also a genre painter, as well as a portraitist and painter of still-life. Both Molenaer and Leyster may have been pupils of the successful Dutch painter, Frans Hals. Molenaer achieved a style close to Hals early on in his career, but later developed a style like that of Dutch genre painter, Adriaen van Ostade. His genre works often depicted players of music, such as his The Music Makers (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), The Duet ((Seattle Art Museum), or Family Making Music (Frans Hals Museum). He also depicted Taverns and the activities of card games or games of the times such as La main chaude, or in Dutch, Handjeklap, which literally means clapping hands. Molenaer also cleverly depicted biblical stories in his own time and surroundings, such as representing a scene from Peter's Gospel set in a Dutch Tavern in, The Denying of Peter (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest)
Maurer, Alfred Henry
American Painter, 1868-1932 American painter. He studied at the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1884 and briefly at the Acad?mie Julian, Paris, during 1897. He received critical success with academic paintings of single female figures in interiors and genre scenes of caf? society, which reflected the influence of the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and William Merritt Chase, for example At the Caf? (c. 1905; St Petersburg, Hermitage). His long residence in Paris from 1897, his participation in various independent salons and his association with Leo and Gertrude Stein led to his interest in avant-garde art. He may have been one of a group of Americans who studied briefly with Henri Matisse. By 1907 he was producing vigorously painted Fauvist landscapes, such as Landscape with Red Tree