Guido Reni

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Guido Reni (November 4, 1575 - August 18, 1642) was a prominent Italian painter of high-Baroque style.

Biography

He was born in Bologna into a family of musicians - son of Danieli Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi - and as a child of 9 apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He is also reputed to have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. The three Calvaert pupils, when Reni was about twenty years old, migrated to the rising rival studio, the so-called Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of "newly embarked or progressives) led by Lodovico Caracci. They were to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni was eclectic in style and thematic.

Work in Rome

In 1602, Reni and Albani moved to Rome to work with the teams led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. By 1604-5, he received an independent commission for a altarpiece to be placed in St Peter's Basilica of the Crucifixion of St. Peter. After a few year sojourn in Bologna, he returned to Rome to become one of the pre-eminent painters during the papacy of Paul V (Borghese).

Reni's frescoed ceiling of the large central hall of garden palace, Casino dell'Aurora located in the grounds of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, is considered his masterpiece. The casino was originally a pavilion commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese^[1]; the rear portion overlooks the Piazza Montecavallo and Palazzo Quirinale^[2]. The massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn (Aurora) bringing light to the world^[3]. The work is restrained in classicism, copying poses from Roman Sarcophagi, and showing far more simplicity and restraint than Carracci's riotous Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne^[4] in the Farnese. Reni in this painting is allies himself more with the sterner Cavaliere d'Arpino,Lanfranco, and Albani "School" of mytho-historic painting, and less with the more crowded frescoes characteristic of Pietro da Cortona. There is little concession to perspective, and the vibrantly colored style is antithetical to the tenebrism of Carravagio's followers. Payments showed that he was paid in 247 scudi and 54 baiocchi upon completion on September 24, 1616.

He also frescoed in Paoline Chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome as well as the Aldobrandini wings of the Vatican. According to rumor, the pontifical chapel of Montecavallo (Chapel of the Annuciation) was assigned to Reni to paint; but, because he felt underpaid by the ministers, the artist left for Bologna. This left Domenichino in the role of the pre-eminent artist in Rome.

Work in outside Rome and in Bologna

In later years, he traveled to Naples to complete a commission to paint a ceiling in a chapel of the San Gennaro. However, in Naples, it is said the other local prominent painters, such as Corenzio, Caracciolo and Ribera, were virulently resistant to competitors, and according to rumor, conspired to poison or harm Reni (as it is rumored befell Domenichino in Naples before him). He passed briefly by Rome, but left that city abruptly, during the pontificate of Urban VIII, after being reprimanded by Cardinal Spinola.

Returning to Bologna, more or less permanently, Reni established a successful and prolific studio. He was commissioned to decorate the cupola of the chapel of Saint Dominic in the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, between 1613 and 1615, resulting in the radiant fresco St Dominic's Glory, a masterpiece that can stand the comparison with the exquisite Arca di San Domenico below. He also contributed to the decoration of the Rosary Chapel in the same church with the Resurrection.

In Ravenna, he painted the chapel in the cathedral with his admired picture of the Israelites gathering Manna. Reni, after departing Rome, alternately painted in a variety of styles, true to the eclectic tastes of many of Carracci trainees. For example, his altarpiece for Samson Victorious formulates stylized poses characteristic of mannerism^[5]. In contrast his Crucifixion and his Atlanta and Hipomenes[9] depict dramatic diagonal movement coupled with the effects of light and shade that betray the influence of Caravaggio. His turbulent and violent Massacre of the Innocents (Pinacoteca, Bologna) is painted in a manner reminiscent of Raphael.

His most distinguished pupil was Simone Cantarini, named "Il Pesarese,"; he painted an portrait of his master, now in the Bolognese Gallery. Other trainees were Domenico Maria Canuti and Giovanni Battista Michelini. The Uffizi Gallery holds a self-portrait. Two other noted pupils were Giacomo Semenza and Francesco Gessi. His themes are mostly scriptural or mythological in subject. The portraits which he executed are few — those of Sixtus V, Bernardino Cardinal Spada and the so‑called Beatrice Cenci being among the most noticeable. The identity of the last-named portrait is very doubtful; it certainly cannot have been painted direct from Beatrice, who had been executed in Rome before Reni ever lived there. Many etchings are attributed to him, some from his own works, and some after other masters; they are spirited, but rather negligent.

Reni died in Bologna in 1642.

He is buried, together with Elisabetta Sirani, in the Rosary Chapel of the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna.

Partial anthology of works

• Self-Portrait, Whitfield Fine Art[10]
• Callisto and Diana
• Crucifixion of St Peter, Vatican, Rome
• Christ Crucified, San Lorenzo in Lucina, Rome
• Holy Trinity, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, Rome
• Conception, Forlì
• Alms of St Roch, Bologna
• Massacre of the Innocents, Bologna
• Pietà, Bologna
• Penitent Magdalene ca. 1635, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore [11]
• Lament over the Body of Christ, Chiesa dei Mendicanti, Bologna
• Ecce Homo, Gemaldegälerie, Dresden
• Saints Peter and Paul, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
• Assumption of the Virgin, Sant'Ambrogio, Genoa
• St Paul the Hermit and St Anthony in the Wilderness, Berlin
• Fortune, Capitol
• Samson Drinking from the Jawbone of an Ass
• Ariadne Capitoline Museums
• Atlanta and Hippomenes 1612 Prado, Madrid [12]
• Atlanta and Hippomenes 1622-25 Capodimonte, Naples [13]
• Madonna del Rosario, Pinacoteca, Bologna
• The Labors of Hercules, Louvre,
• Lucrezia and Cleopatra, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome
• San Sebastiano, Pinacoteca, Bologna
• Adoration of the Magi, Certosa di San Martino, Naples

The Louvre contains twenty of his pictures, the National Gallery of London seven, and others once there have now been removed to other public collections. The most interesting of the seven is the small "Coronation of the Virgin," painted on copper. It was probably painted before the master left Bologna for Rome.

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Cavalli, Gian Carlo (ed.)Guido Reni exh. cat. Bologna 1954
• Pepper, Stephen, Guido Reni, Oxford 1984
• Guido Reni 1575-1642 (exhibiton catalogue Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; Los Angeles County Museum of art; Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth) Bologna 1988
• Spear, Richard, The 'Divine' Guido: Religion, Sex, Money, and Art in the World of Guido Reni, New Haven and London, 1997
• Hansen, Morten Steen and Joaneath Spicer, eds., Masterpieces of Italian Painting, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and London, 2005

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• Gallery, on Artericerca

References

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