"The Sermon on the Mount"

The religious theme of the work is complemented by the noble scale of the landscape, characterized by rich and brilliant blues, painted using ultramarine. This was the most expensive and coveted pigment available to painters at the time, made from the precious stone lapis lazuli.

Though Claude Lorrain is remembered for his landscapes, works such as The Sermon on the Mount indicate the equal significance of history and myth to his oeuvre, an emphasis which was similarly important to his followers. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the landscape would be wholly emptied of human narratives and celebrated entirely on its own terms, by the post-Romantic painters of the Naturalist and Realist schools; though Lorrain's work very much lays the groundwork for this advance.