View of Civitavecchia
17th century
Medium
Pen and brown ink, brown wash over graphite
Dimensions
10 1/4 x 9 5/16 in. (26 x 23.7 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Harry G. Sperling, 1971
Accession Number
1975.131.96
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-drenched harbor of Civitavecchia, a port near Rome, as captured in Claude Lorrain's exquisite 17th-century drawing *View of Civitavec*. Created by the French Baroque master Claude Gellée (known as Claude Lorrain), intimate sheet measures just 10¼ x 9⅜ inches, yet it brims with the artist's signature luminosity and poetic atmosphere. Using pen and brown ink with brown wash over graphite,orrain deftly sketches ships at anchor, distant architecture, and tiny human figures, evoking the gentle rhythm of Mediterranean life. Lorrain revolutionized landscape art, blending classical ...
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...