Cleveland Museum of Art

View of the Acqua Acetosa (recto)

Claude Lorrain

Date

c. 1645

Medium

pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over graphite, framing lines in brown ink

Culture

France, 17th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

This drawing represents a view of the famous Acqua Acetosa, a mineral spring that until the 19th century provided the favored drinking water of Romans who believed in its healing powers. Although topographically accurate, the sheet is not a plein-air study but a vision of an imagined Arcadian world carefully rendered by Gellée, one of the most original painters of the 17th century. The French-born artist spent his career painting and drawing the Roman Campagna and the Neopolitan coastline. Sublimely beautiful pen-and-ink and wash drawings such as the example here reveal the artist's highly poetic response to the natural world and his unparalleled sensitivity to light.

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