His ability to use the tones of his paper and his brown wash to create intense and perfectly balanced lighting schemes, though certainly much imitated, was also more or less unparalleled. One of Claude’s most exceptional gifts as a draughtsman was his ability to balance grandeur and relative formality of structure with a spontaneity and ease of handling that gives even his most complex images a sublime, natural ease and grace. Relatively few major drawings by the artist remain in private hands, and only a tiny handful have come to auction in recent years. Roethlisberger's description of the drawing began: ' On se sent d'emblée devant un chef-d'œuvre de l'art du dessin, qui nous est parvenu dans un état de fraicheur extraordinaire.' Even then, the emergence of such a substantial ‘unknown’ drawing was a significant event, as although Claude was a prolific draughtsman (Roethlisberger’s 1968 catalogue listed 1,129 drawings 1), his enduring popularity has meant that the great majority of his drawings entered famous, well documented collections, primarily in England, at an early date, and many have since passed to museums (some 40% of Claude’s known drawings are in the British Museum).
This large and superbly well preserved drawing was entirely unrecorded until it was published by Marcel Roethlisberger in 1974, shortly before its sale at auction in Switzerland. Claude’s influence on his contemporaries and followers was immense, effectively defining the European vision of Italy for centuries to come. Though the monuments and antiquities of Rome itself and its immediate surroundings had been drawn and painted by other artists since the earlier 16 th century, it was only when Claude took to the wider countryside surrounding the Eternal City in the 1620s that these pastoral locations began to be widely appreciated as subjects – a fashion, though, that was subsequently to endure more or less unabated until the late 19 th century. It is through serene and imposing drawings such as this that Claude Lorrain cemented his position as the ultimate recorder of the landscape, ruins and atmosphere of the Roman Campagna.