"Landscape with Peace and Justice Embracing, 1654"
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).