Currently not on view
The Goatherd,
1663
More Context
Special Exhibition
<p>Having had little formal artistic training before settling in Rome in 1627, the French-born Claude Lorrain went on to become the city’s most sought-after landscape painter, with international patrons who prized his innovative rendering of changing light and atmospheric effects. During his long and prolific career, Claude exploited the textural and atmospheric potential of the etching technique in over forty prints—consisting of both original compositions and creative variations on his painted landscapes. Most of Claude’s etchings date from the 1630s and ’40s, suggesting that he intended these as a way of broadening his audience and solidifying his artistic reputation. </p><p>In this late etching, Claude’s inclusion of a goatherd in an idyllic setting exemplifies the importance of the pastoral genre in seventeenth-century European landscape painting. Such works evoked the legendary unspoiled wilderness of Greek Arcadia, celebrated since antiquity by Virgil and subsequent poets of the Renaissance period as a place where humankind lived in harmony with nature.</p>
Information
1663
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