Claude Lorrain

Born Claude Gellée around 1600 in Lorraine, he spent nearly all his working life in Italy, where he became the leading landscapist by the end of the 1630s. He started with frescoes that built his name, then turned to canvases that grew larger and more deliberate as his fees climbed and his output slowed. He added biblical or mythological figures to satisfy the hierarchy of genres, but the land and the light were always the subject. He kept a visual ledger, the Liber Veritatis, recording 195 finished paintings in careful drawings - a catalogue that now lives in the British Museum. He also made etchings and countless on-site sketches in pen and wash that later artists studied for generations. He died in Rome in November 1682, claimed by the French but formed by Italy, his work eventually flooding English collections where much of it remains.