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.
"Landscape with the Burial of Saint Serapia".
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, "Landscape with the burial of Santa Serapia". In it the artist chooses an archaeological view of the Aventine Hill, with the Tiber River and the Colosseum behind him, and represents the burial of Saint Serapia, whose body is carried by a group of matrons who place it in the tomb. Among all of them Sabina stands out, dressed in red and orange, who mournfully contemplates the scene from a higher plane. Saint Sabina, a noble Roman widow, converted to Christianity under the influence of her maid, Saint Serapia, a native of Antioch, from where she fled as a victim of religious persecution against Christians.

The Spanish art gallery says about this work "Lorena accentuated the strong verticality of the format, probably at the request of his Spanish clients, with the placement of four columns located in the right half of the composition, supposed vestiges of the temple of Juno Regina that actually existed in the Aventine, where tradition placed the martyrdom of Santa Sabina and on which the basilica dedicated to the saint was built in the V century".

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.