"The mid- and late-eighteenth-century development of sensitiveness to nature and one's physical surroundings was at least partly owing not to the attractiveness of nature itself but to the rise of interest in landscape painting, specifically the works of two seventeenth-century schools, Dutch and Italian, that favored wide and deep prospects, rugged scenery, a blurring mistiness in the distance, classical and medieval ruins, and frequently, in the foreground, the presence of shepherds and other rustic figures. The best-known painters of the Italian school — Claude Lorrain, Nicolas Poussin, and Salvator Rosa — were collected by the wealthy but also were made popularly available in sets of engravings with titles like Beauties of Claude Lorrain" (The Norton Anthology of English Literature. www.wwnorton.com/nael).

Claude Lorrain

"A Pastoral Landscape," 1677
"A Coast Scen with Europa and the Bull," 1634
"Landscape with Aenaes at Delos," 1672
"The Enchanted Castle," 1646-47
"Landscape with Peasants Returning with Their Herds," 1637
"Landscape with Windmills and Dancing Figures"

Nicolas Poussin

"Landscape with St. John on Patmos," 1640
"Landscape with Ashes of Phocian," 1648
"Landscape with a Calm