Editing Claude Lorrain (section)

==Critical assessment and legacy==
[[File:Claude Lorrain - View of the Campagna - WGA04990.jpg|thumb|Wash drawing of a ''view of the Campagna'']]
As seen in his painting ''The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba'', Claude was innovative in including the Sun itself as a source of light in his paintings.<ref>Buchholz, E. L., S. Kaeppele, K. Hille, and I. Stotland. ''Art, a world history''. Harry N. Abrams, 232. Print.</ref>

In Rome, [[Paul Bril|Bril]], [[Girolamo Muziano]] and [[Federico Zuccaro]] and later [[Elsheimer]], [[Annibale Carracci]] and [[Domenichino]] made landscape vistas pre-eminent in some of their drawings and paintings (as well as [[Da Vinci]] in his private drawings [https://web.archive.org/web/20080205001934/http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/object.asp?theme=LANDSCAPE&object=912409&row=0] or [[Baldassarre Peruzzi]] in his decorative frescoes of ''[[vedute]]''); but it might be argued that not until Claude's generation, did landscape completely reflect an aesthetic viewpoint which was seen as completely autonomous in its moral purpose within the cultural world of Rome.

In this matter of the importance of landscape, Claude was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with [[Salvator Rosa]]. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in [[scenography]].

Claude Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death.

[[John Constable]] described Claude as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude's landscape "all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/CONSTABLE/Detail.cfm?IRN=143208|title=CONSTABLE : impressions of land, sea and sky – John CONSTABLE – Landscape with goatherd and goats, after Claude|first=National Gallery of|last=Australia}}</ref>