- Museum number
- 1957,1214.178
- Description
-
Pastoral landscape, record of painting in Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri from the Liber Veritatis; in foreground figure ("Apollo") sitting on a rock at l, and a herd of goats, beyond herdsman (Mercury?) at right , and river meandering into background
Pen and brown ink, and grey wash, with grey-brown wash
- Production date
- 1667
- Dimensions
-
Height: 193 millimetres
-
Width: 258 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See 1957,1214.6 for information on the Liber Veritatis.
The handling of this drawing is looser than those that immediately precede it in Claude’s Liber Veritatis, with the strokes of brown ink being particularly loose in areas such as the trees and foreground. The grey wash is also notable for its free application across the entire composition. The pastoral scene is a free adaptation of of LV170 (see 1957,1214.176) which depicts Mercury and Apollo. Claude appears to have modified the focus of the scene from an Ovidian one, to a simply pastoral one, though it is not unfeasible that the tiny figure in the background represents Mercury and Apollo is still represented by the shepherd at the left. The painting that this composition records is now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City Missouri and mesasures 53 x 68.5 cm including a later addition of about 2cm on all sides (see Roethlisberger 1986, no. 245). It was made for a patron resident in Palermo, who may be identified as Don Antonio Ruffo of Messina as an inventory of his possessions states two paintings of around 63 x 75 cm, one meaning a landscape with two small figures and some goats, with a sunrise (see Kitson 1978, pp. 159–60).
Lit: M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Paintings, London 1961, LV172, pp. 405–406; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Claude Lorrain. The Drawings’, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968, no. 974; M. Kitson, ‘Claude Lorrain: Liber Veritatis’, London 1978, no. 172; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Tout l’œuvre peint de Claude Lorrain’, Paris, 1986, no. 245.
- 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
- 1957,1214.178
