Landscape with Peace and Justice Embracing

Inscribed in the centre: Iustitia et Pax/osculatae sunt. It is unusual for the subject of a picture to be inscribed so clearly on the painting.

Although most of La Hyre’s work is of many-figured compositions executed in bright, solid colours, he is best remembered for his contribution to the development of landscape painting. His few surviving landscapes seems to amalgamate the limpid light of Claude Lorraine with the antiquarian interests of Nicolas Poussin. As there was so little landscape painting in Paris in the middle years of the seventeenth century, the works of La Hyre form an illuminating example of the way that taste was turning towards the dry and formal.