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Landscape with Peace and Justice Embracing, 1654
by Laurent de LA HIRE

About this Painting
Inscribed in the centre: Iustitia et Pax/osculatae sunt. It is unusual for the subject of a picture to be inscribed so clearly on the painting. Although most of La Hire's work is of many-figured compositions executed in bright, solid colours, he is best remembered for his contribution to the development of landscape painting. His few surviving landscapes seems to amalgamate the limpid light of Claude Lorraine with the antiquarian interests of Nicolas Poussin. As there was so little landscape painting in Paris in the middle years of the seventeenth century, the works of La Hire form an illuminating example of the way that taste was turning towards the dry and formal.

About the Artist
LA HIRE, Laurent de (b. 1606, Paris, d. 1656, Paris)

La Hire (also spelled La Hyre) was a French Baroque classical painter whose best work is marked by gravity, simplicity, and dignity. He was the son of the painter Étienne de La Hire (c. 1583-1643) but was most influenced by the work of Georges Lallemont and Orazio Gentileschi. His picture of Pope Nicolas V at the Tomb of Saint Francis was done in 1630 for the Capuchins, for whom he executed several other works. For the goldsmiths' company he produced in 1635 St Peter Healing the Sick and the Conversion of St Paul in 1637. In 1648, with 11 other artists, he helped found the French Royal Academy. Cardinal Richelieu called him to the Palais-Royal about 1640 to paint decorative mythological scenes, and he later designed a series of tapestries for the Gobelins.

Reproduced with the kind permission of the creators of Web Gallery of Art (http://www.wga.hu).