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CLAUDE LORRAINE

Claude Lorraine (real name Claude Gelee) was a French landscape painter. He was born in 1600 at Charmagne, Lorraine and died in 1682. When twelve years old he went to live with his brother, an engraver in wood at Friburg, went from him to study under Godfrey Waats at Naples, and was afterwards employed at Rome by the painter Agostino Tassi, to grind his colours and do the household drudgery.

On leaving Tassi he travelled in Italy, France, and Germany, but settled in Rome in 1627, where his works were greatly sought for, and where he lived much at his ease until 1682, when he died of the gout.

The principal galleries of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany are adorned with his paintings; that on which he himself set the greatest value being the painting of a small wood belonging to the Villa Madama (Rome). He excelled in luminous atmospheric effects, of which he made loving and elaborate studies. His figure work, however, was inferior, and the figures in many of his paintings were supplied by Lauri and Francesco Allegrini. He made small copies of all his pictures in six books known as Libri di Verity (Books of Truth), which form a work of great value (usually called the Liber Veritatis), and much esteemed by students.
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