The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

Claude Lorrain painted The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba in 1648, companion to The Mill, and together they exemplify the height of his mature art. The composition depicts the legendary Queen of Sheba preparing to sail to Jerusalem for her famous meeting with Solomon — another voyage narrative that gave Claude his preferred format of a grand harbor scene with figures departing toward a luminous horizon. The architectural grandeur of the harbor buildings, the complexity of the shipping, and above all the quality of light — warm, hazy, golden, the sun low over the distant sea — represent the achieved mastery of Claude's late style. Turner admired the painting so intensely that he stipulated his Dido Building Carthage should hang beside it in the National Gallery, London, where both remain.

Claude's mastery of light reaches its peak in the dazzling sun reflected on the water between the classical harbor buildings, creating an almost blinding central luminosity that draws the eye through the composition toward the infinite horizon.