Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba

The sun blazes low over a glassy harbor, its light flooding between towering classical buildings as the Queen of Sheba's retinue loads boats to set sail for Solomon. Claude Lorrain orchestrates the whole scene around that radiance, dissolving architecture and shipping into a golden Mediterranean haze. Now in London's National Gallery, it is among his most celebrated seaports - so admired that Turner demanded his own works hang beside it. Its companion, the embarkation of Saint Ursula, is also in this collection; together they define his serene poetry of light and water.