River Landscape with Herdsmen
Claude Lorrain
1628-1632
The trees tower majestically above the idyllic landscape in which shepherds and animals are painted like small, pretty ornaments within the vast countryside that stands like a well-ordered stage set around them. A sense of sweetness rests over this landscape; everything is shrouded in a slight haze, but it is an appealing scene, inviting us to explore nature. We might say that Claude Lorrain turned the landscape into poetry, or that he eroticised landscape. Nature is marvellous and inviting; it encourages intimacy and rapture. It is ready to be explored, tying in well with the advent of modern natural science. Works that present nature in a position somewhere between the idyllic and the monstrous, where nature is certainly greater than man, but not dangerous, are called "picturesque" or "pastoral" landscapes. By contrast, images that depict nature as overwhelming and frightening are called “sublime" landscapes.
SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen · Image: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Public domain · Text: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark (text: Henrik Holm), CC0