Landscape With the Flight Into Egypt

Claude Lorrain was a French painter, draftsman, and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in Italy, and was one of the earliest important artists, apart from his contemporaries in Dutch Golden Age painting, to concentrate on landscape painting.

In this painting he has completely marginalized the Biblical subject (like in most of his works). The small figures of Mary with the Christ child, Joseph, and an angel nearly disappear in the darkness of the wooded area to the left. The landscape, depicted in a clear morning atmosphere, gradually recedes into the depths, while the details are painted with precision. Classical buildings, a bridge, a viaduct, and the distant silhouette of a city, the beauty of nature and the shepherd's idyll in the foreground, combine into an idealized landscape, in a manner that was characteristic of the artist's works during these years.

Have a great Tuesday!

P.S. Do you know that still-life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age were a bit like our social media? You can read about it here!