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| Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Rest in Flight to Egypt (1647) |
What I like about this picture (zoomable version here) is the inconspicuousness of the (young) holy family, almost lost (seemingly) amidst the immensity of the landscape, and (apparently) obscured by the busy-ness of daily life depicted in the foreground. Indeed, one might have to read the title of the painting, first, in order to realize its "subject" (inverted commas, because Claude Lorrain was, first and foremost, a landscape painter).
It takes attention, then, and a certain kind of "tuning," to observe and to pay attention to the element of the landscape whose importance actually surpasses that of everything else in the picture - notwithstanding what our eyes might tell us, initially.
And yet the rest of the picture remains beautiful, and the everyday scene remains fascinating. And yet they all receive a different meaning, once the horizon of the painting is re-centered (not visually, but in our understanding) around this new focal point (which is interior, not exterior).
However, this inversion of meaning(s) is up to the "reader," to the one who engages with the scene. In this duality - natural beauty and daily business vs. the spiritual reality in its humble guise - the choice is always with the subject who engages this complex reality..
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