“The Sermon On The Mount”
Gabrielle Cuebas
HUA 101
The Frick Collection
The Frick Collection, which is an art gallery in Manhattan, includes paintings,
sculptures and relics from the Neo Classical and Renaissance period. When I first stepped
into the museum, it was very quiet and serious, so the style of art was perfect for the
setting. I was not much interested in the portraits, but I did enjoy viewing the few
landscape paintings that were available. One in particular was a painting from the 17th
century, specifically the year 1656, called “The Sermon on the Mount,” by Claude
Lorrain. He is considered to be “the Raphael of landscape painting”1 of his time. Lorrain
is quite the skilled artist.
The artist used oil on canvas as his medium. At the top of the hill stands Christ,
surrounded by 12 apostles. He is preaching to the crowd down below. The title of the
painting is what he is preaching, which is from the gospel of Matthew.2 Through this he
is setting “the principles of the Christian ethic.”3 The painting certainly displays
diminishing size because the people at the bottom of the hill, the foreground figures, are
larger in comparison to Christ and the apostles above. There are also small people in the
far left of the painting. There are many subjects in the painting. The landscape is filled
with green grass and trees, blue sky and seas, the mountains, the people, and the animals.
There is nothing boring about the painting at all. At the gallery, I discovered that on the
left of the painting are the Dead Sea and the river Jordan, while on the right is Mount
Lebanon and the Sea of Galilee, which is all in Israel.
Another interesting fact I discovered about this painting as that it was acquired 40
years after Henry Frick’s death. The Sermon on the Mount was his favorite scripture, and
it was read at his funeral. I noticed that Lorrain liked to use people in his landscapes, as
shown in pictures A and B below. I find his artwork to be breathtaking because there is so
much to look at. The main focus in this painting is Christ at the top of the hill, but it does
not take away from the beautiful landscape around it. I love the way the hill and the
grounds below take up the center of the painting, yet the waters and mountain beyond are
so vast and spacious. The colors are soft yet vibrant. The contrast of the hill to the water
is lovely. Overall, this painting has a lot of subject matter, and it is very representational.
The story it communicates is an important one, and it is displayed with such skill and
beauty.
Images
A)
B)
Notes
1
http://arthistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/claude_lorrain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount
3
http://collections.frick.org/Obj923$18873
2