Landscape experienced considerable transformations from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century. Although landscape paintings were known during the Renaissance, they were treated as low subjects, unworthy for a great artist to indulge. Landscape painting became more important during the Baroque to artists such as Rembrandt and Rubens. But landscape kept evolving and lead to impressionist work that was so different from anything the Baroque captured. Peter-Paul Rubens’ captures Baroque characteristics of naturalism and classicism in his painting, Landscape with an Avenue of Trees. In Contrast, Claude Monet’s Antibes Seen from the Plateau Notre Dame, grasps the characteristics of impressionist landscape paintings and reveals the transformation …show more content…
Baroque landscapes often showed small figures in the foreground acting out a Biblical or mythological passage. The landscapes were never actual views of a particular site; instead they were composed in a studio from sketches done in the field. The artist was free to select trees from one place and put them with buildings from another. Landscape painters felt they had to reach beyond the visual into a world of creation that relies on the thoughtful combination of unlike elements to make an artistic statement. This is exemplified in Ruben’s painting Landscape with an Avenue of Trees. The trends that dominated his Baroque, landscape painting are naturalism and classicism. Rubens painting does not show small figures but other characteristics in the painting make it very Baroque. In contrast, it was not a new idea for Impressionists to concentrate on landscape painting. They maintained an urban viewpoint, even when depicting a country scene, which became popular in the impressionism era. For example, Monet’s Antibes Seen from the Plateau Notre Dame. Monet’s work contains the impressionist characteristics of capturing a day or season of the year, subtle gradations of light on the surface, and color overwhelming the form of the