- Museum number
- 1957,1214.171
- Description
-
The sea of Galilee with Christ calling Peter and Andrew (Matthew, IV, 18 and Mark, I, 16f), record of painting (whereabouts unknown) from the Liber Veritatis; in foreground at left Peter and Andrew in a boat off shore, and at right Christ standing on a rock jutting into sea
Pen and brown ink
- Production date
- 1635-1682
- Dimensions
-
Height: 195 millimetres
-
Width: 254 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See 1957,1214.6 for information on the Liber Veritatis.
Open coast scenes were recurrent in Claude’s oeuvre, and this might be taken to be the culmination of Claude’s exploration of this compositional construct. Examples that precede it include LV120, 122, 130 136 and 141, while those that follow it include LV168 and 171. It is also the last of the few drawings in the Liber Veritiatis to be drawn excluseively in pen and is notable for its particularly fine strokes which lend the drawing a highly pictorial quality. The painting that it records was for a Sicilian patron, who is not specified on the inscription on the verso. Roethlisberger 1961, p. 391 suggested that it may have formed a pendant with LV172 and therefore that the patron would have been Prince don Antonio Ruffo in Messina. It is now unknown, yet its simplicity suggests that it was a relatively small work, perhaps of around 50 x 65cm if its presumed pednant is anything to go by. There is a highly finished drawing in the Albertina that further insight into its appearance (see inv. no. 11,527; Roethlisberger 1968, no. 946).
Lit: M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Paintings, London 1961, LV65, pp. 390–92; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Claude Lorrain. The Drawings’, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968, no. 947; M. Kitson, ‘Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis’, London 1978, no. 165; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Claude Lorrain. The Drawings’, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1986, no. 236
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1977 BM, Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis
- 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
- 1957,1214.171
