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 Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus | Four Archers (mk17) | Morning | The Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Morning |
Related Artists:
Johann Wilhelm Preyer
painted A Still Life with Peaches and Grapes on a Marble Ledge in 1803-1889
Gregorio Lopes
Gregorio Lopes (c. 1490 - 1550) was one of the most important Renaissance painters from Portugal. Gregorio Lopes was educated in the workshop of Jorge Afonso, the court painter of King Manuel I. Later he himself became court painter for both Manuel I and for his successor, John III. In 1514 he married the daughter of Jorge Afonso, and in 1520 was knighted by Prince Jorge de Lencastre and entered the Order of Santiago. The work of Gregorio Lopes mainly consists of painted religious altarpieces for various churches and monasteries in central Portugal. Between 1520 and 1525 he worked (together with Jorge Leal) in painting altarpieces for the Saint Francis Convent of Lisbon. Also in the 1520s he painted panels for the Church of Paraeso (Paradise), also in Lisbon. In his first fase, Gregorio Lopes also worked in Sesimbra, Setebal and in the Monastery of Ferreirim, in this latter case together with Cristevao de Figueiredo and Garcia Fernandes. The painter moved in the 1530s to the city of Tomar, where he painted various panels for the Round Church of the Convent of Christ (1536 - 1539) and the main altarpiece of the Church of Saint John the Baptist (1538 - 1539). His last known works include altarpieces for the Convent of Santos-o-Novo in Lisbon (1540) and the Valverde Convent, near Évora (1545).
Abraham Jansz Van Diepenbeeck
1596-1675, Flemish glass-painter, draughtsman, painter and tapestry designer. His reputation rests primarily on his drawings and oil sketches, of which several hundred survive, intended mainly as designs for stained-glass windows and prints. He was strongly influenced by the work of other important Flemish artists of the late 16th century and early 17th, notably Rubens, whose motifs and stylistic elements he frequently reworked in his own compositions.