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 Embarkation of Saint Paula Romana."
Oil on canvas.
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 embarkation of Santa Paula Romana". In it the artist shows the noble Roman widow Saint Paula, who decided to retire in the desert and abandon her worldly life to devote herself to prayer and penance. In 385 she left Rome accompanied by her daughter Eustochia and went to Antioch, where she met with St. Jerome, with whom she undertook a hermit's life. Lorraine immortalizes the moment of her departure, set in a fantastic recreation of the port of Ostia. Port scenes such as the one in question were among Lorrain's favorites.

The work was part of the formidable campaign of art acquisitions organized by the Count-Duke of Olivares in the forties of the 17th century to decorate the vast spaces of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, which included a very notable 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.