pendant

pendant. A painting created by an artist to be displayed as one of a pair. Pendants are usually exactly the same size as each other and closely related in theme; portraits of husband and wife were often produced as pendants, for example. Several of Claude's landscapes were painted as pairs, sometimes related by composition or mood rather than by subject. Examples are Landscape with the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (‘The Mill’) and Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (both 1648, NG, London). They were commissioned by Cardinal Camillo Pamphili, Claude's leading patron of the mid-1640s. However, before the pictures were finished, Pamphili relinquished his cardinalship so he could marry, causing Pope Innocent X (his uncle) to exile him temporarily from Rome. This evidently led the commission to fall through and the paintings were bought instead by the Duc de Bouillon, a French general serving in the papal army. Pamphili then seems to have commissioned a second version of ‘The Mill’, together with a new companion, a View of Delphi, both now in the Doria Pamphili Gallery in Rome. Unlike these Claudes, many pendants have become separated over the course of time and now hang in different locations.