Landscape with ruins and shepherds

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Though he did not travel to Italy, Pierre Patel’s work is impregnated with that country thanks to the collections of engravings of Roman ruins circulating throughout Europe at the time, and to the works sent to Paris by Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). In an atmosphere marked with attributes of grandeur and classicism, he stages a scene of classical architecture: flooded fields, distant vistas and blue skies, and figures of shepherds and laundresses, to create a transfigured landscape in which reality is, according to the formula of Roger de Piles (1635-1709), "represented as one imagines it should be”.  It is silently poetic with diaphanous illumination; fine, light lines, and refined colours that create the measured harmony of an elegiac and timeless world that invites meditation.