View of the Tiber at Rome

The juxtaposition of cliffs and river is frequently found in Chinese landscape painting, but Claude Gellée's composition is topographically more accurate than a typical Chinese landscape painting. Strong contrasts of light, shadow and reflections in the mirror-like surface of the river-rarely found in Chinese or Japanese painting-accentuate the impression of a real location.

Claude was the greatest French landscape painter of the 17th century, though he spent most of his working life in Rome painting the picturesque scenery of the Roman countryside. This lively drawing of the banks of the Tiber River vividly conveys the heat of the day in the contrast of the brightly lit water with the deeply shadowed rocks. Claude's early biographers record how he and fellow artists would go out to the environs of the city to sketch, so this study was probably made directly on the spot. What may be the dome of Saint Peter's Cathedral can be glimpsed on the far right in the distance.