Saturday, April 9, 2016

Roman architecture in drawings by Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain
Arch of Constantine
ca. 1645
drawing
British Museum

"Most Holy Father,
There are many who, on bringing their feeble judgment to bear on what is written concerning the great achievements of the Romans  the feats of arms, the city of Rome and the wondrous skill shown in the opulence, ornamentation and grandeur of their buildings  have come to the conclusion that these achievements are more likely to be fables than fact.  I, however, have always seen  and still do see  things differently. Because, bearing in mind the divine quality of the ancients' intellects, as revealed in the remains still to be seen among the ruins of Rome, I do not find it unreasonable to believe that much of what we consider impossible seemed, for them, exceedingly simple. With this in mind, since I have been so completely taken up by these antiquities  not only in making every effort to consider them in great detail and measure them carefully but also in assiduously reading the best authors and comparing the built works with the writings of those authors  I think that I have managed to acquire a certain understanding of the ancient way of architecture. This is something that gives me, simultaneously, enormous pleasure  from the intellectual appreciation of such an excellent matter  and extreme pain  at the sight of what you could almost call the corpse of this great, noble city, once queen of the world, so cruelly butchered."

 opening of a letter concerning the ancient monuments of Rome addressed to Pope Leo X and written about 1519 by the artist Raphael in collaboration with the humanist Baldassare Castiglione, as quoted in Palladio's Rome / translated and edited by Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks (Yale University Press, 2006)

Claude Lorrain
Interior arcade of the Colosseum
ca. 1635-40
drawing
British Museum

Wash drawings by Claude Lorrain (1604 or 05-1682), one of the many 17th-century French painters based in Rome. In the group seen here, architecture is especially prominent. Claude's lifelong preference for trees and riverbanks did not prevent him from exploring the fabric of Rome itself. Cropped and muted, the same columns and arches will resurface in his moody and (in their day) very expensive paintings.  

Claude Lorrain
Architectural vista
ca. 1640-45
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
River God on the Capitoline Hill
ca. 1635-40
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Tomb of Cecilia Metella
ca. 1638
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Fragment of the Temple of Castor & Pollux
ca. 1640-45
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with plundered ruin and wall
ca. 1640-45
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with the Ponte Molle
ca. 1660
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Roman wall
ca. 1630
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Shrubbery and wall
ca. 1640
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with the Tomb of Nero (so called)
ca. 1640
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Ruins on the Palatine Hill 
ca. 1640
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Landscape with Tower
ca. 1640
drawing
British Museum

Claude Lorrain
Temple of Vesta
ca. 1635
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

It is interesting to see the Temple of Vesta with low-built shanties propped against the sides and masonry walls filled-in between the columns. These additions to the ancient structure were eventually removed, along with the chimney that pokes out conspicuously from the conical roof.