Coast View with Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl
This drawing is a preparatory study for a lost painting. It illustrates a scene from the Aeneid in which Aeneas, the Trojan hero, prepares to visit the underworld in order to consult the shade of his father, Anchises. Leaving his companions behind on the plain, Aeneas is led by a prophetess known as the Cumean Sibyl toward a lofty spot in the wild forest from whence she points to the entrance to the underworld. Virgil set this scene at night, but Claude preferred to light the majestic landscape with the last rays of the setting sun, illuminating a stormy, threatening sky. Aeneas and the sibyl are backlit, casting long shadows. The same effect of backlighting allows Claude to suggest the darkness of the cave that Aeneas must enter.
Claude Gellée, known as Claude Lorrain (1600 or 1604/05 – 1682)
circa 1669-72
Pen and brown ink, traces of a sketch in black chalk, brown and gray wash, with highlights of white gouache on brown-toned paper. Traces of squaring up in black chalk – H. 25.3 cm; W. 35.5 cm – Department of Prints and Drawings, Louvre, Paris, RF 4586 – Gift of the Friends of the Louvre in 1920
circa 1669-72
Pen and brown ink, traces of a sketch in black chalk, brown and gray wash, with highlights of white gouache on brown-toned paper. Traces of squaring up in black chalk – H. 25.3 cm; W. 35.5 cm – Department of Prints and Drawings, Louvre, Paris, RF 4586 – Gift of the Friends of the Louvre in 1920
© RMN / Jean-Gilles Berizzi