Study with Brigands (Lower Section)
ca. 1633
Medium
Etching; only state
Dimensions
sheet: 1 9/16 x 3 1/16 in. (4 x 7.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1922
Accession Number
22.73.5
Tags
Art Historical Context
Claude Lorrain, masterful French Baroque artist born Claude Gellée (1600–1682), created *Study with Brigands ( Section)* around 1633, during his formative years in Rome. Renowned for his poetic landscapes bathed in golden light, Lorrain here turns to etching—a precise intaglio technique where acid bites into a metal plate to form intricate lines. This rare, single-state impression, measuring just 1 9/16 x 3 1/16 inches, captures a compact scene of rugged men, likely brigands, evoking the earthy, dramatic figures that often populated his idyllic vistas. As one of Lorrain's early print experime...
About the Artist
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) · 1604–1682
Claude Gellée was born around 1600 in the village of Chamagne in the Duchy of Lorraine, from which he would take the professional name by which history knows him: Claude Lorrain. Orphaned young, he traveled south to Rome as a teenager, eventually finding his way into the Naples workshop of Goffredo Wals before apprenticing with the Roman landscapist and fresco painter Agostino Tassi around 1622. F...