CLAUDE LORRAIN (Claude Gellée). - Painter, b. at Chamagne (Lorraine) in 1600, d. in Rome on 23 Nov. 1682.
His artistic life unfolded almost entirely in Italy. In 1613-14 he is already recorded in Rome; in 1616-17 he is in Naples with the German painter Gottfried Waals; in 1619 he is again in Rome in the workshop of Agostino Tassi, whose veristic taste shaped the manner of L. for more than a decade; from the first certain work, the small etching of the Tempesta (1630), to the Sole sorgente (ca. 1634), to the Campo Vaccino (ca. 1636), to the Festa del villaggio (1639), all in the Louvre, and to the series of landscapes of the Doria Gallery (1646-48: landscape with Dione and Hippolytus; Mercury with the heifers of Apollo, etc.). But already in the works of that period the researches that were later to revolutionize landscape painting appear mature; the natural appearance of things is transfigured by light, felt not only as color, but as atmosphere, at times preluding attitudes akin to Corot (cf. Acis and Galatea of 1657, in Dresden, and the series of the Hermitage, of 1661-72) and even to Turner (cf. Ulysses brings back Chryseis, ca. 1646; Landing of Cleopatra, ca. 1647, in the Louvre; Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, ca. 1648, in the National Gallery). It is in this vibrant light that the great trees or the fantastic rocks, or the architectures that serve as wings to the countries with the most distant horizons, take on poetic value. To the life of these landscapes the minute figures of boatmen, horsemen, shepherds seem extraneous, placed in the foreground, but very small, and which in reality do not participate in the essential life of the picture. Analogous values recur in the etchings and drawings of L., for the most part in Paris (Louvre, Cabinet des Estampes, Ecole des Beaux Arts), in Oxford, in the Library of Windsor and in the Uffizi.
The very abundant production of L. is preserved in the Louvre and in English museums; other very notable works are in Dresden, in Brussels (Aeneas hunting a stag), in Russia (Hermitage, and the Yussupoff and Stroganoff Collections). In Rome, the landscapes in the Doria and Colonna Galleries are very important. Many works have been lost, among them, in Rome, the decorations of the Palazzi Crescenzi at the Pantheon and Muti at the SS. Apostoli.
Bibliography6 works
Elsa Gerlini