1630
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Italian Landscape is a 1630 unspecified by Claude Lorrain, a Barbizon school work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet Italian valley at dusk: trees, a ruined temple on a hill, and a river winding toward the horizon. The left side is dark, but sunlight spills across the right, turning the sky gold. Claude Lorrain painted this scene early in his career, before he became known for his glowing landscapes. He lived in Rome, not France, and filled his works with the soft light of the Roman countryside. This painting feels like a real place you could walk into. Look up *chiaroscuro* to see how artists use light and shadow like this.
Although French by birth, Claude Lorrain spent his entire working career in Rome. He revolutionized the art of landscape painting by filling his harmoniously ordered scenes (inspired by the campagna, the countryside around Rome) with a golden, hazy light. Painted early in Lorrain's career, Italian Landscape shows a wide, sweeping vista with a wooded hill topped by a structure resembling an ancient Roman temple. The left side of the picture is dark, but the foreground sweeps away in a curve to the right that leads off into an increasingly luminous distance.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Claude Lorrain (French: ; born Claude Gellée , called le Lorrain in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c.
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