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 the marriage of lsaac and rebecca | Port Scene with the Departure of Ulysses from the Land of the Feaci fdg | cattle farmer and the landscape | Two Boats (mk17) | Landscape with St Onofrio (mk17) |
Related Artists:
Gaspare Diziani
(1689 - 17 August 1767) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Roccoco period, active mainly in the Veneto but also in Dresden and Munich. His earliest training was in his native town of Belluno with Antonio Lazzarini, then moved to Venice, to the studio of Gregorio Lazzarini and later that of Sebastiano Ricci. He was seven years older, but otherwise his career was contemporary with the Lazzarini and Ricci fellow-pupil, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Between 1710-1720, he painted a group of eight pictures that included the Mary Magdalene for the church of San Stefano in Belluno, and Entry into Jerusalem for San Teodoro in Venice. He also painted three frescoes on the Life of Saint Helena in the Scuola del Vin next to the church of San Silvestro. Dizianies celerity and technical assurance are evident preparatory oil sketches, with color applied in rapid and spirited strokes. He was also working as a scenery painter for the theater and opera in Venice, Munich (1717), and later in Dresden, working with Alessandro Mauro. Diziani was invited to Rome by Cardinal Ottoboni in 1726, to paint a emagnificent decoration for the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso. The decoration is now known only through an engraving by Claude Vasconi. The Sala dei Pastelli in Ca' Rezzonico has an sotto in su allegorical ceiling fresco presenting Triumph of Poetry (Poetry surrounded by Painting, Architecture, Music and Sculpture).
Jean Clouet
French Painter, ca.1485-1541 painter. He was chief painter to Francis I and produced many pastel portraits of members of the French court. Clouet was one of the best 16th-century portrait painters, both incisive and delicate in the psychological characterization of sitters. His drawings are simple, broad, and subtle; his paintings are fresh in colour, subdued in modeling, and minute in execution. He was celebrated in his lifetime as the equal of Michelangelo. His son Francois Clouet (c. 1515 ?C 72) took his place as official painter to Francis I in 1540.
Palma Vecchio
1480-1528 Italian Palma Vecchio Gallery His birthdate is calculated on Vasari testimony (1550) that he died aged 48. By March 1510 he was in Venice, where he spent his working life. The stylistic evidence of his earliest works suggests that he was apprenticed to fellow Bergamasque artist Andrea Previtali, who had studied under Giovanni Bellini. A signed Virgin Reading (1508-10; Berlin, Gemeldegal.), which may be Palma Vecchio earliest surviving painting, is strongly reminiscent of his teacher. Previtali returned to Bergamo in 1511, and the main corpus of Palma work can be dated from this time. Palma Vecchio oeuvre reflects the change from an early to a high Renaissance conception of the human figure in secular and religious art. He specialized in certain themes that became established in the repertory of genres of the Venetian school in the generation after him. The principal of these were the wide-format SACRA CONVERSAZIONE