The works of Annibale Carracci, Claude Lorrain, and Jacob van Ruisdael are products of the seventeenth century Baroque period, a period in which increasing secularism, naturalism, and a focus on human reason were interwoven with elements of Antiquity and the Renaissance. All three of the paintersÆ works herein are of the landscape tradition. CarracciÆs Flight into Egypt is oil on canvas and was created circa 1600 (Flight 1). The work measures 4Æ x 7Æ6ö and hangs in the Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome (Tansey and Kleiner 840). LorrainÆs Pastoral Landscape (1638) is emblematic of the ideal or Classical landscape, a form which he and others adopted and developed. It is also oil on canvas, measuring 3Æ3ö x 4Æ3-1/4ö (Pastoral 1). The elements within this form of landscape are embodied in CarracciÆs work. Jacob van RuisdaelÆs View of Haarlem from the Dunes of Overveen (1670) is another landscape, also oil on canvas, measuring 1Æ10ö x 2Æ1ö (Tansey et al. 864).
In terms of comparison, View of Haarlem is much smaller in scale than either Pastoral Landscape or Flight into Egypt. However, also greatly diminished in comparison to the other two are the human figures. As Tansey (et al.) notes, this purposeful construction of humans as minute figures mirrored the new philosophies and scientific interests of the Baroque period, ôIn View of HaarlemàRuisdael gives us almost a portrait of the newly discovered, infinite universe, allowing the sky to take up almost three-quarters of the picture spaceö (865). In CarracciÆs Flight into Egypt, we see that the central figures are religious mythology figures in the form of Mary, the Christ Child, and Saint Joseph. However, CarracciÆs ideal or Classical landscape was modeled on the elements developed in France by Ruisdael and Poussin. As such, the landscape and the wide, bounteous beauty of nature take over the composition in a way that reduces the human figures in a similar man...