Claude Lorrain

1600-1682

Claude Lorrain (born Claude Gellée, c. 1600–1682) was a painter, draughtsman, and etcher who transformed landscape painting into a major artistic subject. Born in the Duchy of Lorraine, he spent most of his life in Rome, where he worked as an apprentice to Agostino Tassi and other landscapists before establishing himself as the leading painter of idealized landscapes by the late 1630s. His paintings combine vast, luminous vistas—often featuring harbors, coastlines, and classical ruins—with tiny figures drawn from biblical or mythological narratives, rendered with such delicate detail that he famously joked he sold the landscapes while giving the figures away. His methodical practice of recording his finished works in the Liber Veritatis established a model for later landscape painters. Constable called him the most perfect landscape painter the world had ever seen.