1604/1605 -1682 · Classical landscape and Roman light

Ports in the rising sun, ideal countryside and ancient stories make Claude Gellée, known as Le Lorrain, the master of a classical landscape entirely constructed by light.

Born around 1604 or 1605 in the Duchy of Lorraine, Claude Gellée left his native region at a very young age and went to Italy. In Rome, he worked with the landscaper Agostino Tassi, stayed in Naples, returned briefly to Nancy then settled permanently in the pontifical city around 1628. He drew directly in the Roman countryside, often in the company of Nicolas Poussin, before recomposing in the workshop ideal landscapes intended for popes, cardinals, princes and ambassadors. Sun-drenched ports, temples, majestic and distant misty trees host biblical or mythological episodes whose figures remain deliberately small. From around 1635, Claude records the paintings sold in his Liber Veritatis, a collection of nearly two hundred drawings intended to preserve the authenticity of his inventions. Until his death in Rome in 1682, he imposed a poetic conception of landscape which would profoundly influence Turner, Constable, English gardens and the entire European tradition. The "Claude Gellée" selection notably compares Cleopatra's Landing in Tarsus and Landscape with Shepherd and Herd. His reading favors composition.

In Claude, light is the true architecture of the landscape: it connects the port, the sky, the trees and the distance into an ideal unit.