The oil-on-canvas painting Village Fête, by French Baroque artist Claude Lorrain (actual name Claude Gellée), was created in 1639 and presented to Louis XIV in 1693 along with Seaport at Sunset by landscape designer and gardener André Le Nôtre.
At the moment, it is kept and displayed at the Louvre in Paris.
The design for the Fête (No. 13) in Claude’s Liber Veritatis, a register in which he noted and illustrated the paintings he had completed, has a notation on the reverse stating that the image had been created for Urban VIII.
According to some reports, the artist also created a Village Fête and a Seaport at Sunset for Urban VIII, but Prince Barberini sold these two works of art in 1798.
Therefore, the painting in the Louvre must be a copy that Claude Lorrain created after the original was destroyed.
Lord Yarborough in England held a copy dated 1669, and the Stroganovs collection in St. Petersburg held a copy as well. There are many further copies and clones.
This specific work, created quite early in the artist’s career, exhibits Flemish art’s influence.
From the time of Bruegel, Flemish landscape painters frequently used the composition, which features a group of trees in the center and openings on either side through which the light appears.
Paul and Matthew Bril frequently used it, and Lorrain carried on their tradition in Rome. The bridge equitably connects the middle and far distance in line with traditional 16th-century practice.
A metropolis drenched in a golden mist that is more resemblant of the Roman countryside than the North may be seen through the aperture on the right.
According to Low Country studio custom, Lorrain frequently hired other artists to paint the tiny figures in his paintings, but this does not appear to be the case in this instance based on the coherence of the figures’ and the landscape’s conceptualizations.
