Claude Gellée, also known as Claude Lorrain, (Chamagne, Lorraine, 1600; - Rome, November 23, 1682), was a French painter settled in Italy. Belonging to the Baroque art period, he fits into the so-called classicism, within which he excelled in landscaping. Of his extensive output, 51 etchings, 1,200 drawings, and about 300 paintings survive today.
Generally described by his contemporaries as a person of gentle character, he was reserved and totally devoted to his craft. Almost devoid of education, he devoted himself to the study of classical subjects, and worked his way from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of personal success. He made his career in an environment of great professional rivalry, which nevertheless led him to deal with nobles, cardinals, popes and kings.
His position in landscape painting is of the first order, a fact remarkable for being known in the Anglo-Saxon area - where his work was highly valued and even influenced English gardening - only by his first name, Claude, as well as artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael or Rembrandt. A great innovator in the landscape genre, he was described as the "first pure landscape designer."
Lorrain reflected in his work a new concept in landscape elaboration based on classical counterparts - the so-called "ideal landscape" - which highlights an ideal conception of nature and the artist's own inner world.
This way of treating landscape gives it a more elaborate and intellectual character and makes it the main object of the artist's creation, the embodiment of his conception of the world, the interpreter of his poetry, evocative of a perfect and ideal space.
One of the most significant elements in Lorrain's work is the use of light, which is given primary importance when conceiving the painting: the composition of light serves first as a plastic factor, being the basis with which he organizes the composition, with which he creates space and time, with which he articulates the figures, the architectures, the elements of nature;
secondly, it is an aesthetic factor, highlighting light as the main sensitive element, as the medium that attracts and involves the viewer, and leads to a world of dreams, a world of ideal perfection recreated by the atmosphere of total serenity and placidity that Claude creates with his light.
Lorrain's work expresses an almost pantheistic sense of nature, which is noble and orderly like that of the classical artists from whom Lorrain's work is nurtured, but still free and exuberant like wild nature.
He recreates a perfect world, oblivious to the passage of time, but of a rational nature, fully satisfying the mind and spirit. It follows the ancient ideal of ut pictura poesis, in which the landscape, nature, translates a poetic sense of existence, a lyrical and harmonized conception of the universe.
" Claude knew the world with his heart to the last detail. He used the world to express what he felt in his soul. That is true idealism! "
- Goethe , .
Claude Lorrain's Biography
Claude was born in 1600 in Chamagne, near Lunéville, south of Nancy, in the Duchy of Lorraine, then an independent region. He was the son of Jean Gellée and Anne Pedrose, of peasant origin but with a somewhat affluent position, and was the third of seven children. Orphaned since 1612, he spent a short stay with his older brother in Freiburg in Brisgovia. His brother, a woodcarver who specialized in marquetry, taught him the rudiments of drawing.
In 1613 he traveled to Rome, where he worked as a pastry chef, a traditional Lorraine craft. It was possibly at this time that he entered the service of Agostino Tassi, a landscape painter of the late Roman tradition, of whom he later became a disciple.
Between 1619 and 1621 he settled in Naples, where he studied painting with Gottfried Wals, a little-known landscape painter from Cologne. It should be noted that it is not entirely certain whether his first training was with Tassi and then with Wals or vice versa, given the limited data that is kept about the artist in these years.
In 1625 he began a tour of Loreto, Venice, Tyrol and Bavaria, and returned to his place of origin, settling in Nancy for a year and a half. He collaborated as assistant to Claude Deruet, painter at the ducal court, and worked on the frescoes in the Carmelite church in Nancy (now lost).
Finally, in 1627, he returned to Rome, where he remained for the rest of his days. With a quiet and orderly life, once settled in Rome, he only changed his address on one occasion, from Rue Margutta to Rue Paolina (now Via del Babuino). Although he remained unmarried, he had a natural daughter, named Agnese , with whom he lived together with two nephews also from Lorraine, Jean and Joseph Gellée.
In the 1630s he began to consolidate himself as a painter, making landscapes inspired by the Roman countryside, with a bucolic-pastoral air. He signed his paintings as le lorrain ("the Lorrainian"), which is why he began to be known as Claude Lorrain. In Rome he contacted Joachim von Sandrart and other foreigners established at the papal seat (Swanevelt, Poelenburgh, Breenbergh) , with whom he was introduced to landscape painting.
He also made friends with Nicolas Poussin, another Frenchman living in Rome. Little by little he was improving his position, so he could have an assistant, Gian Domenico Desiderii, who worked with him until 1658.
Until 1630 he painted several frescoes in the palaces of Muti and Crescenzi in Rome, a technique he did not use again.
At that time he began to enjoy a certain fame in artistic circles in Rome, so he received several commissions from prominent personages, and was favored by Cardinal Bentivoglio, who introduced him to Pope Urban VIII, who commissioned two works: Landscape with peasant dance (1637) and View of the harbor (1637).
His patrons were also the cardinals Fabio Chigi and Giulio Rospigliosi, who later became popes like Alexander VII and Clement IX. Throughout his life he painted mainly for the nobility and the clergy, and received commissions from all over Europe, mainly from France. Spain, the United Kingdom, Flanders, Holland, and Denmark.
Lorrain's demand for works was such that in 1665 a dealer had to confess to the collector Antonio Ruffo - who composed several works by Rembrandt - that "there is no hope of obtaining a work by Claude; a lifetime would not be enough to satisfy his clients."
His fame was such that imitators began to emerge - such as Sébastien Bourdon - so in 1635 he founded the Liber Veritatis (British Museum), a sketchbook in which he recorded all his compositions, to prevent forgeries.
This notebook consists of 195 drawings that copy the composition of his works, described down to the last detail, the client for whom it had been painted, and the fees he charged. In 1634 he joined the Accademia di San Luca, and in 1643 the Congregazione dei Virtuosi, a literary society founded in 1621 by Cardinal Ludovisi.
In 1636 he made another trip to Naples, and the following year he received a commission from the Spanish ambassador in Rome, the Marquis of Castelo Rodrigo, for a series of engravings entitled Fireworks. Perhaps on the marquis's recommendation, Claude received a commission from Felipe IV to the Palacio del Buen Retiro in Madrid to decorate the Landscape Gallery alongside works by contemporary artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Herman van Swanevelt, Jan Both, Dughet Gaspard, and Jean Lemaire.
Lorrain made eight monumental paintings, in two groups: four longitudinally shaped (1635-38) and four vertically shaped (1639-41). The iconographic program, taken from the Bible and the stories of the Saints, was elected by the Count-Duke of Olivares, who directed the work.
In 1654 he refused the position of chief rector of the Accademia di San Luca, to live entirely devoted to his profession. Suffering from gout since 1663, in his later years he made fewer and fewer paintings, sliding toward a more serene, personal, and poetic style.
He died in Rome on November 23, 1682, and was buried in the church of Trinità dei Monti, with great signs of respect and admiration from the society of his time. In 1840, his remains were transferred to the Church of Saint Louis of the French, where they currently rest.