Seaport at Sunset

Claude signed and dated this harbour in Rome in 1639. It repeats a picture he had made two years earlier for the Barberini pope, Urban VIII, but larger and with telling changes. Where the first version showed the Barberini bees, the pennants of the big ship on the right now carry the golden lilies of France, and the French royal arms sit in the pediment of the building on the left. He kept one detail from the papal picture, a red flag with the white cross of the Knights of Malta on the nearest ship. That flag has led the Louvre's curators to a possible first owner, still unconfirmed, the bailli de Forbin, a knight of that order and a senior officer of the French royal galleys. On the quay, a man serenades a woman on a long-necked lute while two swaggering gallants watch a brawl.