Landscape Painters at Grand Palais

Before Paris became the world capital of the arts, young painters and sculptors flocked to Rome to complete their training. Luckily, ARTKABINETT social network for collectors enjoys visiting all the savvy spots where fine art is created. "Nature et Ideal," a sumptuous exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, focuses on the first half of the 17th century when Rome was the center of a new trend -- landscape painting.

Landscape as an independent genre had emerged previously, yet it was only around 1600 that it became fashionable.

Two schools vied for the new market: Flemish and Dutch painters supplied collectors with realistic pictures whereas Rome was the place for those who preferred decorative, idealized landscapes inspired by the Italian countryside.

Only half of the 34 artists at the Grand Palais show, which features 80 paintings and some 30 drawings, are Italian. The rest came from Germany, Flanders, Holland and Spain. The two stars, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) and Claude Gellee (1600- 1682), better known as Claude Lorrain (artwork shown left), the man from Lorraine, were French.

The show starts with a delicious riverscape by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609). His "Flight Into Egypt," (pictured right) another of his famous canvases, though in the catalog, was prevented from leaving Italy at the last moment because of quarrels among heirs of the Doria Pamphilj family.

As it happens, Carracci's masterpiece, the frescoes at the French embassy in Rome, the Palazzo Farnese, are, for the first time in history, open to the public (through April 27).