After Claude Lorrain, end of the 19th century-beginning of the 20th century

After CLAUDIO DE LORENA (Lorraine, France, 1600- Rome, Papal States, 1686), late 19th century-early 20th century.
"The Archangel Raphael and Tobias."
Oil on canvas.
Stretcher frame and frame with xylophages.
Measurements: 210 x 141 cm; 223 x 153 cm (frame).

Claude Lorrain's style had many followers over the centuries. The painting in tender is a copy of one of his great works, preserved in the Prado Museum, "The Archangel Raphael and Tobias". In it the artist shows the moment in which Tobias, following the instructions of the angel, tears out the heart and entrails of a huge fish to cure with them the blindness of his father (Book of Tobit: VII, 15). The golden atmosphere that bathes the scene, added to the remarkable verticality accentuated by the trees, brings an ominous aura to the composition.

The work was part of the formidable campaign of art acquisitions organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares in the forties of the seventeenth century to decorate the vast spaces of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, which included a remarkable number of landscapes. At a minimum, a series of 24 "landscapes with anchorites" and 10 "Italianate landscapes" were commissioned, large-format works by different artists. "Only a part of these paintings have come down to us and are now mainly preserved in the Museo del Prado," says the gallery.

Lorrain was an important French landscape painter who worked in Italy. Born Claude Gellée, he took the art surname of his hometown Lorraine, in northeastern France. His first apprenticeship in painting probably took place in Naples, at the German landscape painter Godfrey Waals. In 1625, while in Rome, he came under the protection of Agostino Tassi (1578-1644), a landscape painter. After this period he traveled extensively in Italy, France and Germany, and returned to work in Lorraine. In 1627, he received the patronage of Cardinal Bentivoglio (1579-1644) and Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644). With these early works, Lorrain made a reputation as a talented landscape painter who fully understood all the effects of light and the laws of nature.