Paisaje con el entierro de Santa Serapia

By 1639 the most sought-after landscape painter in Rome was a Frenchman, Claude Gellée, known simply as Claude Lorrain, and the orders were coming from far away. This is one of a set he painted for Philip IV of Spain, sent to decorate the king's new pleasure palace outside Madrid, the Buen Retiro. The subject is a Christian burial from the early Roman persecutions: Serapia, a servant girl whose faith had converted her mistress, being laid in her tomb. But notice how little room the story takes. The figures cluster along the lower edge while the light does the real work, spreading gold across the trees and a distant temple. Claude built these scenes in the studio from drawings made outdoors in the Roman countryside, then set the sacred event down inside them afterward, small and almost incidental to the hour of the day he was really painting.