- Museum number
- 1957,1214.141
- Description
-
Landscape with Apollo and Mercury, based on Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (II, 680 ff), record of painting in the Earl of Leicester's collection, Holkham from the Liber Veritatis; in foreground Apollo playing a violin and sitting on river bank, beyond at left Mercury driving cattle towards l, and in background at left a town
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white, on blue paper
- Production date
- 1655
- Dimensions
-
Height: 195 millimetres
-
Width: 255 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See 1957,1214.6 for information on the Liber Veritatis.
Claude explored this Ovidian narrative on several occasions, such as LV92 and 128. This depiction, however, is the most elegant and classicising of all of these renderings. This is in part achieved through the incorporation of remote classical structures such as the citadel with its temple, and the stone bridge before it. The depiction of Apollo with his lyre is also particularly elegant, and done in the more elongated style that Claude started to employ in the mid 1650s. The drawing technique, on a pale blue paper, with strong pen lines and delicate yet extensive white heightening further increases the light effect of this sheet. The painting that it records is the first of two commissions made for the Roman noble, Francesco Alberini; the second being its pendant of LV139, the 'Sea Coast of Naxos with Bacchus and Ariadne' (see 1957,1214.145). This painting is at Holkham Hall , Norfolk (canvas, 74 x 98 cm; see Roethlisberger 1986, no. 203).
Lit: M. Roethlisberger, 'Claude Lorrain, The Paintings', London 1961, LV33, pp. 324–25; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Claude Lorrain. The Drawings’, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968, no. 756; M. Kitson, ‘Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis’, London 1978, no. 135; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Tout l'œuvre peint de Claude Lorrain’, Paris, 1986, no. 203
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1977 BM, Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Metamorphoses
- Acquisition date
- 1957
- Acquisition notes
- Accepted by H M Government in lieu of tax on the estate of the 9th Duke of Devonshire.
See M. Kitson's 'Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis', pp. 28-9, for a full account of the provenance of the sketch-book.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1957,1214.141