Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain

Port with the Villa Medici (1639)

Port with the embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648)

The repudiation of the Hagar (1668)

Claude Lorrain , also known as Claude gel (l) ée or Claude Le Lorrain , Italian Claudio di Lorena (* 1600 in Chamagne , Lorraine ; † 23. November 1682 in Rome ) was a French painter of the Baroque , mainly worked in Rome. He contributed significantly to the development of landscape painting as an independent genre and developed a lyrical-romantic style, which in the history of art within ideal landscape painting is referred to as "idyllic-Arcadian" due to its cheerful mood.

Life

Little is known about Lorrain's childhood. He was born as Claude Gellée in Chamagne , Lorraine . The name Lorrain is an origin name that comes from the word Lothringer (French = Lorraine). At a young age he went as an orphan to his brother, a copperplate engraver , in Freiburg im Breigau. He initially worked as a pastry baker and this profession probably brought him to Italy at an early age . When he was 13 he lived in Rome. There he began an apprenticeship with Agostino Tassi , who designed illusionistic ceiling paintings. It is possible that Lorrain Tassi in designing the Villa Lante of Cardinal Montalto in Bagnaia helped. Just as uncertain, but likely, is his stay in Naples with the Flemish landscape painter Gottfried Wals . In 1625 he only returned briefly to France . Here he worked as an assistant to Claude Deruet on the frescoes of the Carmelite Church in Nancy . Then he went back to Rome - this time for good.

Around 1630 he painted frescoes there in the Palazzo Crescenzi, after which he only painted on the easel . Besides that he always worked alone, with the exception of one assistant. Lorrain was a very thoughtful person who had an intuitive feel for topics. He converted biblical or mythological subjects into sensitive pictorial scenarios. During these years he had also established himself as a leading landscape painter. Lorrain lived at the foot of the hill on which the church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti stands. From 1635 the documentation of Lorrain's work got better, because the artist himself now kept a record of his commissions. In addition to ordinary citizens, the ruling popes as well as their families and followers were among his customers. In the same year he received an order from Philip IV of Spain. Lorrain contributed at least seven large landscapes to the design of his palace. In accordance with the religious theme, he sensitively adapted the character and mood of the landscapes.

The large-scale paintings seduced him into a lively, bold and monumental style, which is in contrast to the earlier, in the northern tradition, rather small, detailed works. His biographer Joachim von Sandrart described how they roamed around Rome with other artists and made sketches. Often these excursions led deep into the landscape to picturesque places. The Temple of the Sibyl in Tivoli , which can be found in many of Lorrain's works, was famous at that time . Despite a precise observation of nature as the basis for his work, his imagination also flowed into the pictures. So he idealized nature, renounced everything worldly. This is how his landscapes appear so calm and often downright majestic.

Lorrain was never married, but his daughter (Agnese) was born in 1653. From 1660 family life increased because two of his nephews lived with him. As he got older, he created fewer pictures. In return, these few were all the more mature and for an exclusive group of customers. Since the choice of subjects was often left to the client, who were mostly very educated or had learned advisors, the topics he dealt with are rare or unique in art history. He painted ten large pictures for the Duke of Paliano, Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna . Lorrain's style eventually became more epic and heroic. With his last picture ("Ascanius kills the stag of Silvia") he returned once more to the heroic world of Virgil's Aeneid , the subject that occupied him very much in his later creative period. Lorrain died in 1682 and was buried in the church of Santissima Trinità dei Monti, at whose feet he had lived for decades.

Lorrain's influence on the landscape experience

In order to evoke a landscape experience that corresponded to the pictures of Claude Lorrain, painters and travelers of the 18th century used so-called Claude glasses as an aid . These glasses are concave mirrors prepared in terms of shape and tint. If you look at a landscape in these mirrors - if you turn your back on the landscape - you get a landscape impression in the concave mirror, the proportions and colors of which matched the painted pictures. Two centuries later, however, Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon sees in his style the "serious danger of being unfriendly". The influence of Claude Lorrain on the landscape perception of his time went even further, his idealized landscapes became a model for landscape design. "The balance of parts achieved by Claude, the harmony between man, nature and history that became visible, became a model not only for many painters of the coming centuries, but also for many private individuals to design their surroundings as a garden according to this pattern."

Works (selection)

Berlin, Gemäldegalerie

Landscape with Cephalus and Procris

Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts

Villa in the Roman Campagna

Dresden, Old Masters Picture Gallery

Coastal Landscape with Acis and Galatea (1657)

Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (1647)

London, Duke of Westminster Collection

Capriccio with Arch of Constantine (1651)

London, National Gallery

Landscape with Narcissus and Echo (1644)

Port with the embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648)

Landscape with the Wedding of Isaac and Rebekah (1648)

Landscape with Psyche in front of Cupid's Palace (1664)

Mainz, State Museum Mainz

The ford (Il guado) (1632/34)

Landscape with the Arch of Titus (1644)

Munich, Alte Pinakothek

The repudiation of the Hagar (1668)

Hagar and Ishmael in the desert (1668)

Pastoral landscape with setting sun (1670)

Seaport when the sun rises (1674)

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum

Ascanius kills the stag of Silvia (1682)

Naples, Museo di Capodimonte

Landscape with Nymph Egeria and King Numa (1669)

Paris, Musee National du Louvre

Harbor at Sunset (1639)

Port with the arrival of Cleopatra in Tarsus (1642)

Zurich, Kunsthaus

Landscape with the Dance of the Seasons (1662)

Coastal Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl (1665)

Exhibitions

• The enchanted landscape . February 3 to May 6, 2012 in the Städel Museum Frankfurt am Main
• The light of the Campagna: Claude Lorrain's drawings from the British Museum, London . October 13, 2017 to January 14, 2018 in the Hamburger Kunsthalle

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Barock (1600–1770), LERN HELFER 2010
2. ^ Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Vol. 7, Leipzig 1876, p. 556.
3. ^ Matthias Eberle, Adrian Buttlar: Landscapes and Landscape Garden , in: German Institute for Distance Learning at the University of Tübingen: Funkkolleg Kunst, Studienbrief 7, Tübingen 1985, p. 37.
4. ^ The distant echo of a dark act in FAZ of February 13, 2013, page 30
5. ↑ Frank Hoffmann: The picture luck of the undecided. Review. In: taz . April 10, 2012.

literature

• Günther Bergmann: Claude Lorrain. The glow of the landscape . Prestel, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7913-2055-6 .
• Kurt Gerstenberg : Claude Lorrain. Landscape drawings. Woldemar Klein, Baden-Baden 1952.
• Marcel Roethlisberger (Ed.): In the light of Claude Lorrain. Landscape painting from three centuries . Hirmer, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7774-3500-7 .
• Werner Schade (Ed.): Claude Lorrain. Paintings and drawings . Schirmer Mosel, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-88814-769-7 .
• Werner Schade: Claude Lorrain . Edition Nationale, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-7433-0271-2 .

Web links

Commons : Claude Lorrain  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Claude Lorrain in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Claude Lorrain at Zeno.org .
• Web Gallery of Art
• Claude in the National Gallery, London