Sepia-Toned Ideal Landscapes: Claude Lorrain's "Liber Veritatis"

2024/10/09

The Mita Media Center (Keio University Library) houses ideal landscapes that fascinated the British in the 18th and 19th centuries. These are print reproductions of the "Liber Veritatis" (Book of Truth), a collection of drawings by the landscape painter Claude Lorrain (1600–82), who created lyrical, pastoral worlds by depicting glowing light with exquisite tonal gradations. Although Claude spent most of his life in Rome, many of his works were brought back to Britain via the Grand Tour, which reached its peak in the 18th century. In these ideal landscapes, golden light envelops the entire scene, reflecting off mountains, trees, classical architecture, and ruins, while herdsmen and shepherds rest. Large trees, silhouetted against the backlight, create a framework of light and shadow that guides the viewer's gaze toward the dazzling, distant mountains.

The "Liber Veritatis" was originally a sketchbook in which Claude recorded his commissioned oil paintings. After his death, it was acquired by a British aristocrat and later engraved by the British printmaker Richard Earlom (1743–1822) at the request of John Boydell, who was dedicated to the business of reproducing paintings through prints. Earlom used mezzotint to recreate Claude's soft washes and printed them in sepia ink. This collection of prints gained immense popularity, conveying Claude's imagery even to those who previously had little opportunity to see his oil paintings or drawings directly. Its influence was so profound that it is no exaggeration to say that 18th and 19th-century Britain enjoyed landscapes through Claude's work—ranging from landscape painters like Richard Wilson and J.M.W. Turner and poets like Thomas Gray and John Keats, to landscape gardens modeled after Claude's paintings, and even an optical device called the "Claude Glass" used to view nature as if it were a Claudian landscape.

The images of Claude's works, brought from Italy to Britain and reproduced and disseminated through prints, have now crossed the sea to reach Keio University. The exhibition "Land-scape: Portable Landscapes" (October 7 – December 6) held at the Keio Museum Commons brings together various landscapes that have become "portable" through reproduction technologies such as printing and photography. We invite you to see for yourself the diverse forms of landscapes that many people have copied and collected from the Middle Ages to the present day.

(Miho Kirishima, Curator, Keio University Art Center (KUAC))