Ship Harbor with

Ship Harbor with the Queen of Sheba to the loading port of the Queen of Sheba is a painting done in oil on canvas by French artist Claude Lorrain. It measures 148 cm high and 194 cm wide. Dated 1648, it is now in the National Gallery in London. Specializing in landscape, often of religious or mythological setting, Lorrain had an idealized vision of the landscape, where the cult of antiquity, serenity and calm sea and sky, sun, figures reflect a spirit evocative of idealizing a mythical past, lost but remembered in a perfect ideal. Claude recreated in his works often a kind of lyrical landscape, with a taste for wide panoramas, sea ports, the analysis of the light and thoughts of a prestigious classical past.One of the key features in Lorrain’s work is his use of light, usually naturally from the sun, which sits in the middle of the scene, often-as-in this case marine scenes at ports, which serve an excuse to take some action to the subject depiction. The theme chosen for this picture revolves around the mythical figure of the Queen of Sheba, referred to in Kings and Chronicles books of the Bible, the Koran and the history of Ethiopia, ruler of the Kingdom of Sheba, an ancient kingdom in the presumed that archeology were located the current territories of Ethiopia and Yemen. According to the Old Testament, the Queen goes to Israel, having heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon, was so impressed by the wisdom and wealth of the wise Hebrew king who converted to monotheism, singing praise to the god Yahweh.Lorrain chose an unusual scene in the biblical iconography, the journey of the Queen of Sheba to Israel, composing a scene of bucolic air, bathed in a beautiful light of dawn, bringing the rising sun in the center of the table, at the point of escape the horizon, which inevitably leads the viewer’s gaze. The scene is framed in an architecture of a conventional type, with a harbor full of boats and small rowing boats, and numerous human figures with costumes that evoke the Greco-Roman tradition. The artist took great care in every detail of the painting, highlighting the imposing Corinthian columns to the left, the galleon waiting to greet the queen, the loading on the boats, according to legend, the Queen took many gifts to Solomon, features such as poor women or the boy lying watching the scene, and the Queen of Sheba down the stairs to the boat, dressed in red and blue with a golden crown.Dido building Carthage, or the rise of the Carthaginian kingdom, by Joseph Mallord William Turner. On the composition, Lorrain used the technique of “repoussoir” a form of painting in layers that give a sense of spatial regression, the horizon depth. The contrast between the sunshine and the darkness of the surrounding architecture also cause an effect of depth of the sky, perspective on the run. The mastery of the artist’s nuanced color tones masterfully achieves this sense of depth, going to graduate the colors under cool shades away in space. The colors of dawn, made with different shades of yellow ocher and titanium white denote high levels of perfection in the pictorial embodiment of the light, as few artists were able to Baroque, comparable to the works of great masters such as Velazquez and Vermeer .Also be noted the coloration of the sea, in combinations of indigo blue and yellow ocher which provides a green hues that seem to reflect perfectly the reflection of light on the water surface. On this table there is a famous anecdote concerning the English painter JMW Turner: the artist donated his painting Dido building Carthage, or the rise of the Carthaginian kingdom (1815), of similar composition to the typical Lorrain at the National Gallery with the condition that was hung next to the port to the loading of the Queenof Sheba Lorrain.