CLAUDE Lorrain
French 1600-1682
River landscape with Tiburtine Temple at Tivoli
c.1635
oil on canvas
38.0 x 53.0 cm
Felton Bequest 1967
1796-5

Claude spent most of his working life in Rome where he was the most successful foreign artist of his generation. He was one of very few seventeenth-century artists who painted only landscapes and his innovative manner and consummate technique contributed to the acceptance of pure landscape as a serious art form.

A key to his success is that he created an idealised interpretation of the countryside around Rome and imbued his landscapes with references to the much idolised antique. This is epitomised here in the portrayal of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, which was one of the best known and most dramatically sited of all the surviving antique monuments of Rome and the Campagna.

Claude has given the work strong Arcadian overtones, Arcadia being the location of pastures and woods associated with many ancient gods.
The key relationship in this work is the
emblematic classical temple painted within the idealised landscape bathed in golden light. Claude includes a shepherd playing a flute, thus aligning landscape with music and harmony, alluding also to the gods Apollo and Pan, ancient gods with musical attributes. According to legend, Arcadia was the birthplace of Pan.