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Baroque and Rococo
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain(b Chamagne, Lorraine, ?1604–5; d Rome, 23 Nov 1682).
French painter, draughtsman and etcher, active in Italy. He has long been known as the greatest of all ideal landscape painters. Ideal landscape is a term signifying the creation of an image of nature more beautiful and better ordered than nature itself. The term is closely linked to the pastoral, and contented shepherds guarding their flocks and herds are usually an integral feature of Claude’s pictures. He was far from being the inventor of this art form, which first emerged in Venetian painting around 1510, but he brought it to a pitch of refinement not reached by anyone else. Claude’s distinctive contribution to the genre was to use light as the principal means both of unifying the composition and of lending beauty to the landscape. He was also able to introduce into the artificial formula, to an unusual degree, effects studied from nature itself. Almost from the first, his work reflected courtly values of ‘high finish’ and decorum, and it is no accident that his most important patrons were members of the European nobility and higher clergy.
Coast Scene with the Rape of Europa
1667
Oil on canvas, 134,6 x 101,6 cm
Royal Collection, London
