Coast Scene with a View of Civitavecchia
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) French
Not on view
Claude Lorrain was the most famous and most sought-after landscape painter working in Rome in the 17th century. He made numerous plein air studies in the countryside around Rome and then incorporated his knowledge of nature and light into his painted compositions.
This sheet is one of a pair of presentation drawings made for Pope Urban VIII who commissioned from the artist a pair of small octagonal paintings on copper depicting sites associated with papal building projects. This one was not executed in oil. The subject seems to have been replaced by Pastoral Landscape with Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo, known through a painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (PD.950-1963). The pendant relates to a painting at the Petit Palais, Paris, Coast Scene with the Port of Santa Marinella (PDUT872), of the same size as the drawing.