Claude Lorrain's contributions

             He concentrated on making sketches outside set in open spaces, but because of the disorganisation of the real landscape, from what Claude saw, he would rearrange the surroundings and subject matter at a later date. The rearrangement followed artist rules usually taken from Greece and Rome or even biblical information and mythology, which was more pleasing to the eye (3). This meant he often painted idealised scenes with mythological characters providing a story to fit the landscape background. He also gave a more mysterious and an atmospheric feel to his compositions, by adding human figures in old fashion dress, or as peasants and shepherds, mostly shown as rural life (4). This technique becomes more apparent, as he intended his paintings to be more appealing to the viewer, as he tended to decorate and romanticised the mundane natural and artificial features of an area. His work was created solely for the pleasure of the onlooker.
             Many of Claude's works include the sun as their focal point, an effect virtually never before shown in a painting. In fact the main subjects in his work are the landscapes themselves, everything else in the composition stay as accessories. It is also suggested that the key to his overwhelming success was due to an idealised interpretation of the countryside, around Rome and that inspired his landscapes with references to the much-idolised antique. This is epitomised in the painting below, of the River landscape with Tiburtine Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, which was one of the best known and most dramatically sited of all the surviving antique monuments of Rome and the Campagna (5). It is evident that, Claude has given Arcadian overtones, Arcadia representing the location of the pastures and woods associated with the ancient gods, and the essential relationship in this work is the symbolic classical temple painted within the idealised landscape bathed in golden light.