The Landscape and the view

Italian and French landscapes

Change in notion of space/landscape from medieval to baroque (God’s intention to a world of mechanical forces, whose patterns could be studied and understood)
Rise in importance of the city
Increased claims to land by land owners, agriculture etc. = interest in surveying, measuring, precision
Despoliation of the land by armies, neglect, peasant poverty
This reality not present in landscape painting (imaginary paradisiacal scenes).

Renaissance: landscape regarded as ‘background’/ a stage for the subject

i.e. Raphael’s Esterhazy Madonna, 1508:

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/r/raphael/2firenze/2/42ester.html

Lomazzo: Treatise of Art (1584) discusses landscape / real and ‘fantastic’

· Considered Titian the greatest in this respect

i.e. Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, 1514

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/t/tiziano/mytholo1/sacred_p.jpg

marriage portrait / (title is late 18^th century)

· Neoplatonic philosophy / the beauty of the creation = awareness of divine perfection

· Landscape envelops the figures / new mood / influential for 17^th century artists

i.e. Annibale Carracci: River Landscape, late 1590s (fig. 7.3 text) (note: the following image is different from the one in the text)

http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?41400+0+0+gg33

· no narrative or moral message

· a ‘decorative’ landscape / a ‘place of delight’

· ‘classical’ landscape (paysage composé / composed landscape) / human control

· balanced, symmetrical, architectonic

· clear and rational foreground, midground, background

Classical landscape further developed by Nicholas Poussin

Landscape with St. John on Patmos, 1640 (fig. 7.4 text)

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/eurptg/19pc_poussin.html

Roman intellectual community
John writing Revelation
Serious subject matter
Everything contributes to the ‘reading’ of the theme of the picture: the Second Coming of Christ and the passing away of all earthly things ie. Greek temple ruins, shattered buildings, empty pedestals
Heroic landscape
Nothing superfluous / clarity / logic
Framing device of trees / Trees, obelisk =verticality
Winding path
Repetition of shapes
‘civilized landscape’
Rules of art

Development of Poussin’s classicizing tendencies seen in his two versions of Arcadia:

The Arcadian Shepherds, 1628-9 (fig. 7.5 text)

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep5/Image443.jpg

· shepherds discover tomb and disturbing message / skull as memento mori

· diagonal composition / more loosely painted

Visual source is Guercino’ s version of c. 1620

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/g/guercino/0/arcadia.html

Et in Arcadia Ego, 1640 (fig. 7.6 text)

http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/france17/poussin/PON004.html

· later version: greater contact with Roman sculpture

· entered the collection of Louis XIV / influential

· ‘Even in Arcadia I exist’ (‘I’ is considered to refer to death)

· Arcadia / landscape theme

· Arcadia a remote part of Greece (does actually exist) / rustic inhabitants

· Pastoral tradition / classical Greek poetic tradition of carefree, open air shepherd life

· From the Ecologues or Bucolics of Virgil / imaginary ‘Utopia’

Claude Gellée (1600-1682) aka Claude Lorrain (born in the duchy of Lorraine)

· French / also painted the ideal landscape / Roman Campagna

· Elite clientele of popes and princes

To Rome at age 20, lived there all his life / influence of Annibale Carracci

Claude. Landscape with Dancing Figures (The Marriage of Isaac and Rebekah), 1648 (fig. 7.7 text)

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/c/claude/2/07rebecc.html

· country dancers / rural delights

· universal theme of generalized ‘golden age’ / glowing, golden evening or morning light

· typical river, bridge, path to control the eye

· studies outdoors / painted in studio

· combined studies for imaginary landscape

Pendant to this painting:

Claude. View of Delphi with Procession (Sacrifice to Apollo), 1650 (fig. 7.8 text)

http://colours-art-publishers.com/images/landscape_with_a_procession_to_delphi_claude_lorrain.jpg

· not meant to be a specific historical scene (as in history painting)

· travellers arrive at imaginary shrine of Apollo

· sun shines into viewer’s eye / dream like rendering

· always unable to fully capture the scene

· a sense of longing / we can never really attain the scene

· Freudian desire for the unattainable

Also produced seascapes

Seaport: The Embarkation of St. Ursula, 1641 (fig. 7.9 text)

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/c/claude/1/

· place is imaginary

combination of actual architecture ie. Villa Medici in Rome (http://user.chollian.net/~ucnet2005/Europe-Italy/Rome/WFAeur%20Italy-Rome%20Villa%20Medici-01.jpg) and Pietro da Cortona’s Santa Maria Della Pace (http://www.saed.kent.edu/SAED/History/Baroque/Italy/Cortona/paceext.jpg)

· 13C Golden Legend / tales of saints

· British princess Ursula to Rome with 11,000 virgins

· Massacred by the Huns at Cologne upon their return journey

· Claude’s scene is of the group before they leave Rome

· Evening sunlight

Enchanted Castle

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/collection/guides/castle.htm

· (Enormous influence of Poussin and Claude landscapes in the 18^th century / Claude Glass)

Another 17^th century painter whose images produced the ways in which the landscape was later viewed is Salvator Rosa (1615-73)

· ie later descriptions of any wild place was described as ‘like Rosa’.

· Worked in Rome / independent self-promoter

· Produced threatening landscapes / the opposite of the Claudean vision

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/r/rosa/river_la.jpg

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~broglio/1102/paintings/rosa_finding_moses1665.jpg

http://www.duemetri.it/pinacoteca/quadri/17.jpg

· Representation of what would later be defined as the sublime (an aesthetic category of the feeling of terror, awe)

· Dark colours / chiaroscuro

Dutch Landscape

Most popular of all genres in 17C Holland
Bought by most levels of society
Part of the creation of a domestic space
Most are pastiches of actual and imagined scenes.
Protestant belief in hard work, duty, productiveness related to how the land was viewed.
Preference for the ‘particular/local’ rather than for ideal Italianate pastoral views.
Recreation of familiar views

Jan van Goyen (1596-1656)

Dunes, 1629 (fig. 7.14 text)

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/g/goyen/1/dunes.html

enormously prolific / more than 800 drawings and 1200 paintings
developed a tonal, almost monochromatic (tans, browns, grayish greens) manner of painting with a diagonal composition
low viewpoint, large dunes, darkening sky became part of his formula in the Dutch picture market (quite different from his earlier livelier pictures):

http://membres.lycos.fr/manchicourt/Goyen.htm

became destitute after losses in the real estate and tulip markets

Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9-82)

· Most admired / moody, heroic landscapes

Jewish Cemetery c. 1660 , c. 3 x 3 feet (fig. 7.15 text)

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/r/ruysdael/jacob/2/jewish.html

another version:

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/R/ruisdael/jewish_cemetery.jpg.html

· Actual tombs (they are still in the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery today) , but also allegory of death / ruins, rainbow = death, but also hope

· Tree ‘beckons’ us toward the tombs / blasted and flourish trees (old/new; death/life)

· Overt message not typical of Ruisdael or landscape painting in general

· Ruisdael has changed a modest creek to a rushing mountain stream / imaginary Gothic building included

· Stimulation of a poetic mood

· Emotional effects aimed for

Larger than life effects typical ie.

Winter Landscape, 1670 (fig. 7.16 text)

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/ruysdael/jacob/3/winter_l.jpg

large building (size most likely enhanced) adds power, drama to an everyday scene

similar device used in Windmill at Wijk:

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/r/ruysdael/jacob/3/windmill.html

Also popular in Holland, as part of the national self-definition, were seascapes:

http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?50439+0+0+gg50

http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?64721+0+0+gg50

http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?56333+0+0+gg50

A final category of landscape was the vedute (pp. 289-291) or view (but in the narrow sense of a portrait of a building or cityscene.)
Many served as souvenir scenes for an increasingly mobile European population.
Rome especially was a city for pilgrims, diplomats, merchants etc.

Codazzi. View (similar to figs. 7.25, 7.26 text)

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/html/c/codazzi/

typical inclusion of ruins and modern streets / living with the past and with tradition