Fiesta en la aldea

Claude Lorrain signed this in Rome in 1639, a French painter who had made the city his home and built a career on golden, idealised landscapes. The picture had a notable later owner. Andre Le Notre, the man who laid out the gardens of Versailles for Louis XIV, kept it in his own collection, and in 1693, late in his life, he gave it to the king together with its companion, a seaport at sunset. It is a country festival, peasants dancing under tall trees while the light rakes in low from the side, the kind of warm backlit glow Claude spent his life chasing. He had actually painted the pair once before, in 1637, for Pope Urban VIII. Those originals left the Barberini family and vanished, so this is his own second version.