page_title: Liber Veritatis
section_title: Reproductions
hierarchical_section_title: Liber Veritatis / Reproductions
caption_attribution_description: English: liber veritatis holy family Русский: СВЯТОЕ СЕМЕЙСТВО С АНГЕЛОМ
context_page_description: The Liber Veritatis, meaning Book of Truth in Latin, is a book of drawings recording his completed paintings made by Claude Lorrain, known in English as "Claude". Claude was a landscape painter in Rome, who began keeping this record in 1635/6, as he began to be highly successful, and maintained it until his death in 1682. The book is now in the British Museum, and was owned by the Dukes of Devonshire from the 1720s until 1957. It was reproduced in print form from 1774 to 1777 by Richard Earlom and had a considerable influence on British landscape art. The title Liber Veritatis was apparently invented for these reproductions, but is now also used for the original.
  The drawings, like most by Claude, combine pen and wash, the latter brown or grey, and often both. There are often highlights added in white bodycolour, and less often touches in other colours, such as gold and blue.
  The original book was a sketchbook made up of alternating groups of white and blue pages, in fours, with an average page size of 19.4 by 25.7 cm.
context_section_description: Richard Earlom, a leading English printmaker, was commissioned by John Boydell to copy all 200 drawings as prints, which were published from 1774 to 1777, when a collected edition in two volumes was published as Liber Veritatis. Or, A Collection of Two Hundred Prints, After the Original Designs of Claude le Lorrain, in the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire, Executed by Richard Earlom, in the Manner and Taste of the Drawings.... with the inscription on the reverses, a "descriptive catalogue of each print" and the current owner, where it was known.  A further volume of 100 prints after other Claude drawings from various British collections was added in 1819, also using "Liber Veritas" as its title.
  The prints used etching for Claude's pen lines, and mezzotint for the ink washes, giving a good impression of the originals.  All used brown ink on white paper, so disregarding the blue of half the original pages.  The prints were a huge success, reprinted and the plates reworked to give increasingly detailed reproductions.  They were recommended by drawing teachers as models for copying, and influenced the technique of English watercolour artists in particular, for example Francis Towne.
  Another full set of print reproductions after the Liber Veritatis, by Ludovico Caracciolo, was published in Rome in 1815. Caracciolo was an Italian landscapist, who became a protege of Elizabeth Foster, the second duchess of the 5th Duke, who moved to Rome after she was widowed in 1811.  All the pages were reproduced in a book on the Liber Veritatis by Michael Kitson, and all are now available online on the British Museum website.
  The Liber Veritatis inspired J.M.W. Turner to assemble his Liber Studiorum (Latin: Book of Studies, a collection of 71 prints after his paintings and watercolours printed from 1807 to 1819.  Some later artists adopted the name Liber Veritatis for their own similar drawn records of their work, including Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870), a Dutch landscapist, and the Swiss painter Eugène Burnand (1850–1921).
caption: Earlom print of LV 154, 1776
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