Claude LORRAIN. Lot of two etchings1600-1682

The tempest.

Etching; mm. 125x174. small margins. on the centre bottom: CL inv. issue of the XIXth century. Good copy

Bound with:

Brigants.1633

Etching; mm. 125x199. trimmed at the woodblock. issue of the XIXth century. Good copy

In the first etching, in a stormy sea, three ships are in difficulty, while in the foreground a boat with rowers, full of barrels, moves away from the scene.

In the second etching, at the edge of a forest, two brigands attack a man near a palm tree, while two others take his wife away, to the left. Russell in his catalog for the 1983 exhibition of Lorrain's work at the National Gallery of Art (Washington), states how this subject of traveler robbery was popular between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is interesting, however, to discover that this topic was not often explored by Lorrain.Painter and engraver, he was one of the greatest initiators of landscape painting, particularly of the 'classical landscape' genre. Around 1640 he began to develop his now famous style where pastoral serenity and the ancient grandeur of the Roman countryside prevailed, exerting a significant influence on the development of English landscape painting of the eighteenth century. For the bibliography of La Tempesta: Robert-Dumesnil 5; Mannocci 6 IV B (von VII). For the bibliography of Scene of brigands:Mannocci 1988 11.V.A; Blum 1923 7.V; Robert-Dumesnil 1835-71 I.12.III.