Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Guercino
(1591 - 1666) |
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Muralist, Secular Narratives, Art Work
| Name: |
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Guercino |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Cento |
| Nationality: |
Italian |
| Birth: |
1591 |
| Death: |
1666 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Muralist, Secular Narratives, |
| Medium: |
oil on canvas |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Italian Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Grouped with the second generation of the Bolognese school, Guercino is particularly famous for a handful of pictures, all done in Rome during the 1620s, which were and are regarded as among the most advanced paintings of their day. Guercino's vivid interpretations of earlier Venetian traditions lent vigor to the early baroque movement in Rome, yet much of his later oeuvre was a near repudiation of those early accomplishments and reflects Guercino's steady attempts to tame his style to suit the classicizing tastes of his numerous Italian and European clients. Bom in Cento to Andrea Barbieri and Elena Ghisellini, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri earned the nickname "Guercino" early in life on account of the squint he developed as an infant. Contemporary biographers (Malvasia and Scanelli) stress his precocity in painting and drawing, and most scholars believe that despite some training Guercino was probably (as he himself professed) largely self-taught. A few minor local artists afforded him technical knowledge in his chosen mediums, and in 1607 Guercino's father placed him with the painter Benedetto Gennari the Elder, with whom Guercino maintained a partnership until Gennari died in 1610. More important to Guercino's development were the works of Scarsellino, Bononi, and Ludovico Carracci. Ludovico's 1591 altarpiece Holy Family with St Francis, then in the church of the Cappuccini in Cento, was, according to Malvasia, especially inspiring to the young artist, who declared it to be his own wellspring. Guercino's trips to Ferrara in 1616, Bologna in 1617, and Venice in 1618 exposed him to a wide range of artists, " including Rubens and, of course, the Venetians" which helped shape his sensuous, distinctive style of boldly modeled forms viewed in soft, flickering areas of light and dark. Little is known of Guercino's work before 1612, the year in which Padre Antonio Mirandola, Canon of S. Savatore in Bologna (and later President of the Monastery of S. Spirito in Cento), began his lifelong patronage. Mirandola was instrumental in Guercino's first important commission for a now lost aharpiecc, All Saints in Glory, painted in 1613 for the church of S. Spirito in Cento. This was soon followed by other commissions to decorate private palaces in Cento. Guercino's admiration for the Carracci was evident in his establishment of his own accademia del nudo, in 1616, emulating the famous Carracci Academy. By the following year Guercino already had twenty-three students and was soon in such great demand that commission deadlines were difficult to meet. In 1618 at the request of Padre Mirandola, Guercino made a series of anatomical drawings to instruct young artists. Padre Pietro Martire Pederzani gained possession of the drawings, taking them and the artist to Venice, where Guercino met the aging Palma Vecchio and through him reportedly discovered the genius of Titian. Certainly, the Venetian journey was an influential experience for the young artist, whose palette and textures quickly responded to what he had seen. Through his work for Mirandola and local patrons Guercino's fame soon spread, and by 1619 he had come to the attention of the Duke of Mantua* Ferdinando Gonzaga. For him Guercino painted his beautiful Erminia and the Shepherd (dated 1620, Birmingham, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery), in which his early mastery is fully evident. With a nod at the Venetian bucolic landscape, Guercino concentrates on the seated, robust figures of the weaving shepherd and the still partially armor-clad Erminia to evoke, through their attitudes and peaceful expressions, the benefits of pastoral life. A tangle of sturdy limbs, selectively spotlit in Guercino's ineffable manner, lends both energy and romantic mystery to the scene. The picture earned Guercino a good fee and a knighthood; the honor was repeated by Cardinal Serra in December for another work Guercino had completed that same year. A number of wonderful pictures of a similar style can be grouped to this period including his Raising of Lazarus (Paris, Louvre) and the Suicide of Cleopatra (Pasadena, Norton Simon Museum). The Suicide, with its creamy flesh, smoky chiaroscuro, and subdued yet beautifully choreographed color harmonies of blues, reds, tawny browns, and blacks, is a particularly happy example of Guercino's brilliant talent. The year 1620 saw Guercino receive his most prestigious ecclesiastical commission to date (again through Padre Mirandola), the St. William Receiving the Monastic Habit, done for the Church of St. Gregory in Bologna (now Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale). Called by Sir Ellis Waterhouse "one of the first pictures painted in a stylistic idiom which can honestly be called 'full Baroque'," the picture is a genuine accomplishment. Here Guercino captured a fleeting but profoundly significant moment in which the great ninth-century warrior received the Benedictine habit and became a monk. Full of quotations from Titian, the picture brilliantly hovers between stability and turbulence; forms are simultaneously solid yet dissolved into light and shadow; the mood is both serious and poetic It was an instant success and guaranteed Guercino's reception in papal circles. Thus, when the Bolognese cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi was elected Pope Gregory XV in 1621, he summoned Guercino to Rome. Ludovisi patronage (including that of the Pope's nephew Ludovico Ludovisi) became Guercino's principal source of commissions until the Pope's death in 1623. Asked to paint the Benediction Loggia for St. Peter's (which was never done), Guercino produced a number of his most famous pictures during his relatively short stay in Rome. For Monsignor Costanzo, Guercino painted the ceiling of the Palazzo Costaguti with a scene of the Sleeping Rinaldo Abducted by Armida, which the great Guercino scholar Sir Denis Mahon places first in the problematic sequence of Roman commissions. This was followed by another ceiling commission, the celebrated Aurora in the casino Ludovisi, done for the Pope and Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in 1621. Generally regarded as a brilliant departure from Guido Reni's* famous Aurora (dated 1614, done for the Casino Rospigliosi), Guercino's version was its antithesis, full of marvelous illusion in which the spectator's eye is guided past the fictive architecture to a vast open sky across which Aurora's chariot races in majestic pageantry. The most advanced example of illusionistic ceiling yet painted, Guercino's Aurora was, to the minds of some scholars at least, a decade too early and was not, at first, as universally celebrated as his other pictures had been. Nonetheless, Guercino continued to make his mark. His Burial and Reception into Heaven of St. Petronilla, commissioned by Pope Gregory XV in 1621-23 for St. Peter's, has been placed among the most advanced altarpieces of its type. Now in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, it demonstrates Guercino's original assimilation of such sources as Raphael,* Caravaggio,* and the Carracci,* creating daring new vantage points hitherto unknown in the history of the painted altarpiece. Moreover, it adds a note of spontaneity to the action while maintaining an overall dignified and solemn mood, wholly appropriate to the gravity of the subject matter. Yet the Petronilla altarpiece also evidently met with criticism, as prevailing tastes preferred a tamer, calmer, more classicizing approach to style. That critical attitude, as well as the preference for classicism, had a decided influence on Guercino's further development. When the Pope died in 1623, Guercino returned to Cento, directing an active workshop for almost twenty years. A small rural town, Cento has been called a backwater, but Guercino was not forgotten. He carried on what amounted to a very successful "mail order business" (to quote Sir Ellis Waterhouse again) in altarpieces and history pictures. Guercino's subjects were many, and among his most prized are his sensitive and poetic interpretations of landscapes inspired by the landscape traditions of Ferrara and Bologna. Despite his absence from a major art center, Guercino received, but politely rejected, numerous invitations from distinguished patrons including Charles I, who invited Guercino to court in 1625 (a position accepted in 1626 by Orazio Gentileschi*). Maria de' Medici of France was also interested in him. He painted a Death of Dido for her in 1631. Now in the Galleria Spada, Rome, the picture was never delivered to Maria on account of the political turmoil in France. It was displayed in Bologna and brought Guercino much acclaim. In 1632 Guercino was in Modena working for the Duke and Duchess, but declined their invitation to remain at court, and in 1639 he turned down an invitation from King Louis XIII. Shortly after Reni's death in 1642 Guercino transferred his shop to Bologna, anticipating a share of the commissions now available. Always a great colorist, a brilliant draftsman and composer, Guercino evolved a more "classical" style in the last decades of his career. His palette lightened, his compositions stabilized, and his marvelous flickering lighting all but disappeared. The gestures of his figures became calmer and subdued. Though some late works lack the dramatic intensity of his earlier style, Guercino*s subtle use of various tonalities of the same color and his delicate handling of the paint surface rank many of his late paintings with the masterpieces of seventeenth-century Italian painting. An example of this stylistic shift is Hersilia Separating Romulus from Tatius (ca. 1645, Paris, Louvre), which adopts the frieze-like arrangement of forms so favored by the classicists, and shows Guercino's figures in a uniformly brightly lit world articulated by broad areas of clear colors, including a particularly vivid blue (reminiscent of the Tuscans). Several years later, in 1651, Guercino produced a major altarpiece, The Virgin and Child with the Patron Saints of Modena (also Paris, Louvre). This displays a much more subdued composition (compared to his earlier altarpieces) but has finely conceived figures and is a thoughtful commentary on Titian's Pesaro Altarpiece. Four years later, Queen Christina of Sweden paid Guercino a visit, indicating that his reputation was undiminished. Plagued by failing health during the last years of his life, Guercino fell seriously ill in 1661. He recovered, but died in 1666. He is buried in the Bolognese church of S. Salvatore. His later works were often the product of studio assistants, notably his nephews Benedetto and Cesare. Besides his numerous paintings, steadily produced for churches and private patrons in both Italy and Europe, Guercino was an indefatigable draftsman whose prodigious output has been the subject of several important exhibitions. The ideas for every one of Guercino's numerous paintings were worked up through a series of preparatory drawings, done in ink or chalk. Moreover, Guercino delighted in making independent drawings of landscapes, caricatures, genre scenes, and other inventions. From the quality, number, and diversity of his drawings, Guercino has earned himself an equally important position in the history of Western draftsmanship. Guercino's account book for the years 1629 to 1666 is a useful source for information on commissions. It was first published in 1808 and is included in the 1841 edition of Malvasia's Felsina pittrice. Our knowledge of Guercino's oeuvre is dependent on the lifetime effort of the distinguished scholar Sir Denis Mahon, who authored the catalogue on Guercino's paintings and drawings for the Bologna 1968 exhibition. Much new knowledge was gained from his 1991 exhibition which was organized for Bologna and which traveled to Frankfurt and Washington, DC. |
Samples of Work
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