Liber Veritatis

[5] Such a record of an artist's work is exceptionally rare from this or earlier periods, and has greatly helped scholars; drawings are noted in the literature on the paintings as e.g. "LV 123".

Claude told his biographer Filippo Baldinucci, to whom he showed it at the end of his life, that he kept the record as a defence against other painters passing their work off as his, as had already begun to happen when he started it.

[6] The drawings became increasingly elaborate as the years went by, until "the book became his most precious possession and virtually an end in itself as a work of art".

[13] The end of the original book was apparently reached with LV 185 on 25 March 1675, as Claude's note on the reverse records, but other sheets were added.

[17] This long period of limited access and little handling has kept the drawings in "exceptionally fine" condition, despite the paper being thin.

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.

[23] The prints used etching for Claude's pen lines, and mezzotint for the ink washes, giving a good impression of the originals.

They were recommended by drawing teachers as models for copying, and influenced the technique of English watercolour artists in particular, for example Francis Towne.

[26] 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.

[27] 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.

[28] 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).