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 :. | Pastoral Landscape (mk17) | 2nd third of 17th century | Paisaje de un puerto | The Expulsion of Hagar | Rest on the Flight into Egypt (mk17) |
Related Artists:
Diego Quispe Tito
(1611-1681) was a Peruvian painter. He is considered the leader of the Cuzco School of painting. The son of a noble Inca family, Quispe Tito was born in Cuzco, and worked throughout his life in the district of San Sebastien; his house is still extant, and shows his coat of arms on its door. His earliest signed painting is an Immaculate Conception from 1627, gilded in a fashion typical of the Cuzco school. The work's elongated forms reveal a knowledge of Mannerism; where Quispe Tito learned the style is unknown, but it is hypothesized that he encountered it in the work of Italian Jesuit Bernardo Bitti, who was active at the time in Cuzco. In addition, he is believed to have known Luis de Riaño in his youth, and may have derived some elements of his style from the older artist; de Riaño, a painter from Lima, had trained in the workshop of Angelino Medoro, and so would have provided another source of Italian influence. Quispe Tito also was influenced in his work by engravings from Flanders; indeed, his best-known work, the 1681 Signs of the Zodiac in Cuzco Cathedral, is a series of copies of Flemish engravings in which each zodiac sign is tied to a parable from the life of Christ. These engravings were designed for distribution in Peru, where worship of the sun, moon, and stars was still practiced in some quarters; they were designed to encourage worship of Christ and His miracles in place of the zodiac. A further series, depicting scenes from the life of John the Baptist and dating to 1663, was also produced on Flemish models.
Ludwig Emil Grimm
1790-1863,German draughtsman, engraver and painter. He was a brother of the philologists and fairy-tale collectors Jakob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859). He attended the Kunstakademie in Kassel from 1805 to 1807. He then moved to Munich to study with the engraver Carl Ernst Hess (1755-1828), and he became a student at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste there. He revealed a talent for portraiture in numerous sketches of his family and friends. In 1814 he served with the Prussian army in the military campaign against France, then completed his studies in Munich. In 1816 he visited Italy,
Baron Pierre Narcisse Guerin
Paris 1774-Rome 1833 French painter. He won enthusiastic recognition in 1799 for his Marius Sextus (Louvre). A defender of the classicism of J. L. David, he became director of the École de Rome in 1822. He counted among his pupils Delacroix, G??ricault, and Ary Scheffer, who were to launch the romantic school.