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 :. | Port with the Ville Medici (mk17) | Landscape with Dancing Figures (The Mill) vg | The Trojan Women Set Fire to their Fleet | Landscape with the Finding of Moses | Embarkation of St Paula Romana at Ostia |
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Loo, Jacob van
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1614-1670 was a Dutch painter and popularized around 1650 a close-focus concert on a loggia or terrace. So Van Loo became known for his conversation groupings with a subtle color palette, and according to Arnold Houbraken famous for his nudes. He was the founder of the Van Loo family of painters. Van Loo was born in Zeeland in the Dutch Republic. His father might have been a notary, but most time he is regarded as the son of a painter, Jan van Loo, who trained him. (As part of the city archives in Sluis have been destroyed during World War II it is impossible now to make out what is true). His early influences include Thomas de Keyser and Jacob Adriaensz Backer. In 1642, Jacob moved to Amsterdam, where his contemporaries included Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Bartholomeus van der Helst. In 1643 he married the sister of the painter Martinus Lengele and had six children. They lived on Rozengracht, in the Jordaan and Eglon van der Neer became one of his pupils. In 1660, Van Loo fled the city after having fatally stabbed someone in his belly, during a fight in an inn. He was sentenced to death in absentia and was forever banned from the state of Holland. Van Loo settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the Acad??mie de peinture et de sculpture and where he died in 1670. Van Loo's work was done in the Baroque style, which had begun in Rome and which was becoming a Europe-wide phenomenon in this period. He was a major influence on Johannes Vermeer, when painting Diana and Her Companions. He painted portraits of Johan Huydecoper van Maarssenveen, his wife, his sister Leonara Huydecoper, married to Jan J.