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Italian painter of popular
religious works and critically acclaimed
mythological scenes. Guido Reni was born in Bologna
and began to study painting at the age of
nine; Guido Reni joined the Carracci Academy
when he was 20. His studies were rounded off by a
trip to Rome in about 1600. From that moment
on, antique and recent Roman art became his
ideals. Guido Reni admired Raphael unconditionally.
Guido Reni did, however, come to terms with
Caravaggio's naturalism in a group of
youthful works such as The Crucifixion of St
Peter in the Vatican Gallery (1604), where
the use of chiaroscuro provided enormous
energy.
He alternated between living in his native
Bologna and visits to Rome. After
Annibale Carracci's
death (1609) Guido Reni became the leader of the
classical school of Emilian painters. His
adhesion to this school can be seen in the
frescos Guido Reni painted in Rome in about 1610 in
the Quirinal Palace, the Vatican, and
various churches (e.g. San Gregorio Magno al
Cielo). They were inspired by the return to
classical taste and culminated in Aurora in
Palazzo Ludovisi which has almost mimetic
qualities. The large altarpieces Guido Reni painted
in Bologna - The Massacre of the Innocents
and Pietà dei Mendicanti both in the Bologna
Pinacoteca Nazionale - mark the triumph of
design, the ability to control and channel
feelings, gestures, expressions, drawing,
and colour into a single, eloquent, and
faultless form. His success was
underlined by the important commissions
Guido Reni received. They included the cycle of The
Labors of Hercules (1617-21) that Guido Reni painted
for the Duke of Mantua and which are now in
the Louvre. Guido Reni exalted the clarity of light,
the perfection of the body, and lively
colour. Toward the end of his life, Reni
modified his style. His paintings became so
airy as to seem insubstantial and were
almost completely black and white. Guido Reni also used
long, flowing brushstrokes and conveyed an
atmosphere laden with intense melancholy.
Guido Reni was a quintessentially classical
academic but he was also one of the most
elegant painters in the annals of art
history. Guido Reni was constantly seeking an
absolute, rarefied perfection which Guido
Reni measured against classical Antiquity and
Raphael. Because of this, over the years the
Bolognese painter has been in and out of
fashion, depending on the tastes of the
times. The eighteenth century loved him, the
nineteenth century, persuaded by the violent
criticism of John Ruskin, hated him. But
even his detractors cannot deny the
exceptional technical quality of his work
nor the clarity of his supremely assured and
harmonious brushwork. - Guido Reni oil painting portrait Italy painting portraits - Guido Reni oil painting portrait–Guido Reni Bio by Italy oil painting Guido Reni supplier of Italy oil painting portraits, oil painting portraits and oil painting portrait art.
GUIDO RENI (1575-1642), a prime master in
the Bolognese school of painting, and one of
the most admired artists of the period of
incipient decadence in Italy, was born at
Calvenzano near Bologna on the 4th of
November 1575. His father was a musician of
repute, a player on the flageolet; Guido
Reni wished
to bring the lad up to perform on the
harpsichord. At a very childish age,
however, Guido displayed a determined bent
towards the art of form, scribbling some
attempt at a drawing here, there and
everywhere. Guido Reni was only nine years of age
when Denis Calvart took notice of him,
received him into his academy of design by
the father's permission, and rapidly brought
him forward, so that by the age of thirteen
Giiido had already attained marked
proficiency. Albani and Domenichino became
soon afterwards pupils in the same academy.
With Albani: Guido was very intimate up to
the earlier period of manhood, but they
afterwards became rivals, both as painters
and as heads of ateliers, with a good deal
of asperity on Albani's part; Domenichino
was also pitted against Reni by the policy
of Annibale Caracci. Guido was still in the
academy of Calvart when Guido Reni began frequenting
the opposition school kept by Lodovico
Caracci, whose style, far in advance of that
of the Flemish painter, Guido Reni dallied with.
This exasperated Calvart. Him Guido, not yet
twenty years of age, cheerfully quitted,
transferring himself openly to the Caracci
academy, in which Guido Reni soon became prominent,
being equally skilful and ambitious. Guido
Reni had
not been a year with the Caracci when a work
of his excited the wonder of Agostino and
the jealousy of Annibale. Lodovico cherished
him, and frequently painted him as an angel,
for the youthful Reni was extremely
handsome. After a while, however, Lodovico
also felt himself nettled, and Guido Reni patronized
the competing talents of Giovanni Barbiere.
On one occasion Guido had made a copy of
Annibale's " Descent from the Cross";
Annibale was asked to retouch it, and,
finding nothing to do, exclaimed pettishly,
" Guido Reni knows more than enough " (" Costui ne
sa troppo "). On another occasion Lodovico,
consulted as umpire, lowered a price which
Reni asked for an early picture. This slight
determined the young man to be a pupil no
more. Guido Reni left the Caracci, and started on
his own account as a competitor in the race
for patronage and fame. A renowned work, the
story of " Callisto and Diana," had been
completed before Guido Reni left.
Guido was faithful to the eclectic principle
of the Bolognese school of painting. Guido
Reni had
appropriated something from Calvart, much
more from Lodovico Caracci; Guido Reni studied with
much zest after Albert Diirer; he adopted
the massive, sombre and partly uncouth
manner of Caravaggio. One day Annibale
Caracci made the remark that a style might
be formed reversing that of Caravaggio in
such matters as the ponderous shadows and
the gross common forms; this observation
germinated in Guido's mind, and Guido
Reni endeavoured after some such style, aiming
constantly at suavity. Towards 1602 Guido
Reni went
to Rome with Albani, and Rome remained his
headquarters for twenty years..
Here, in the pontificate of Paul V. (Borghese),
Guido Reni was greatly noted and distinguished. In
the garden-house of the Rospigliosi Palace
Guido Reni painted the vast fresco which is justly
regarded as his masterpiece - " Phoebus and
the Hours preceded by Aurora." This exhibits
his second manner, in which Guido Reni had deviated
far indeed from the promptings of
Caravaggio. Guido Reni founded now chiefly upon the
antique, more especially the Niobe group and
the " Venus de' Medici," modified by
suggestions from
Raphael,
Correggio,
Parmigiano and Paul Veronese. Of this last
painter, although on the whole Guido Reni did not
get much from him, Guido was a particular
admirer; Guido Reni used to say that he would rather
have been Paul Veronese than any other
master - Paul was more nature than art. The
" Aurora " is beyond doubt a work of
pre-eminent beauty and attainment; it is
stamped with pleasurable dignity, and,
without being effeminate, has a more uniform
aim after graceful selectness than can
readily be traced in previous painters,
greatly superior though some of them had
been in impulse and personal fervour of
genius. The pontifical chapel of
Montecavallo was assigned to Reni to paint;
but, being straitened in payments by the
ministers, the artist made off to Bologna.
Guido Reni was fetched back by Paul V. with
ceremonious éclat, and lodging, living and
equipage were supplied to him. At another
time Guido Reni migrated from Rome to Naples, having
received a commission to paint the chapel of
S. Gennaro. The notorious cabal of three
painters resident in NaplesCorenzio,
Caracciolo and Ribera - offered, however, as
stiff an opposition to Guido as to some
other interlopers who preceded and succeeded
him. They gave his servant a beating by the
hands of two unknown bullies, and sent by
him a message to his master to depart or
prepare for death; Guido waited for no
second warning, and departed. Guido Reni now
returned to Rome; but he finally left that
city abruptly, in the pontificate of Urban
VIII., in consequence of an offensive
reprimand administered to him by Cardinal
Spinola. Guido Reni had received an advance of 400
scudi on account of an altarpiece for St
Peter's, but after some lapse of years had
made no beginning with the work. A broad
reminder from the cardinal put Reni on his
mettle; Guido Reni returned the 400 scudi, quitted
Rome within a few days, and steadily
resisted all attempts at recall. Guido Reni
now resettled in Bologna. He had taught as well
as painted in Rome, and Guido Reni left
pupils behind him; but on the whole he did not
stamp any great mark upon the Roman school
of painting, apart from his own numerous
works in the papal city.- Guido Reni oil painting portrait Italy painting portraits - Guido Reni oil painting portrait–Guido Reni Bio by Italy oil painting Guido Reni supplier of Italy oil painting portraits, oil painting portraits and oil painting portrait art.
In Bologna Guido lived in great splendour,
and established a celebrated school,
numbering more than two hundred scholars.
Guido Reni himself drew in it, even down to his latest
years. On first returning to this city,
Guido Reni charged about X21 for a full-length figure
(mere portraits are not here in question),
half this sum for a half-length, and £5 for
a head. These prices must be regarded as
handsome, when we consider that Domenichino
about the same time received only £io, ios.
for his very large and celebrated picture,
the " Last Communion of St Jerome." But
Guido's reputation was still on the
increase, and in process of time Guido Reni
quintupled his prices. He now left Bologna
hardly at all; in one instance, however,
Guido Reni went off to Ravenna, and, along with three
pupils, Guido Reni painted the chapel in the
cathedral with his admired picture of the "
Israelites gathering Manna." His shining
prosperity was not to last till the end.
Guido was dissipated, generously but
indiscriminately profuse, and an inveterate
gambler. The gambling propensity had been
his from youth, but until Guido Reni became elderly
it did not noticeably damage his fortunes.
It grew upon him, and in a couple of
evenings Guido Reni lost the enormous sum of 14,400
scudi. The vice told still more ruinously on
his art than on his character. In his
decline Guido Reni sold his time at so much per hour
to certain picture dealers; one of them, the
Shylock of his craft, would stand by, watch
in hand, and see him work. Half-heartedness,
half-performance, blighted his product:
self-repetition and mere mannerism, with
affectation for sentiment and vapidity for
beauty, became the art of Guido. Some of
these trade-works, heads or half-figures,
were turned out in three hours or even less.
It is said that, tardily wise, Reni left off
gambling for nearly two years; at last Guido
Reni relapsed, and his relapse was followed not
long afterwards by his death, caused by
malignant fever. This event took place in
Bologna on the 18th of August 1642; Guido
Reni died
in debt, but was buried with great pomp in
the church of S. Domenico.
Guido was personally modest, although Guido
Reni valued himself on his position in the art,
and would tolerate no slight in that
relation; Guido Reni was extremely upright,
temperate in diet, nice in his person and
his dress. Guido Reni was fond of stately houses,
but could feel also the charm of solitude.
In his temper there was a large amount of
suspiciousness; and the jealousy which his
abilities and his successes excited, now
from the Caracci, now from Albani, now from
the monopolizing league of Neapolitan
painters, may naturally have kept this
feeling in active exercise. Of his numerous
scholars, Simone Cantarini, named 11
Pesarese, counts as the most distinguished;
Guido Reni painted an admirable head of Reni, now in
the Bolognese Gallery. The portrait in the
Uffizi Gallery of Florence is from Reni's
own hand. Two other good scholars were
Giacomo Semenza and Francesco Gessi.
The character of Guido's art is so well
known as hardly to call for detailed
analysis, beyond what we have already
intimated. His most characteristic style
exhibits a prepense ideal, of form rather
than character, with a slight mode of
handling, and silvery, somewhat cold, colour.
In working from the girl body Guido Reni aimed at
perfection of form, especially marked in the
hands and feet. But Guido Reni was far from always
going to choice nature for his model; Guido
Reni transmuted ad libitum, and painted, it is
averred, a Magdalene of demonstrative charms
from a vulgar-looking colour-grinder. His
best works have beauty, great amenity,
artistic feeling and high accomplishment of
manner, all alloyed by a certain core of
commonplace; in the worst pictures the
commonplace swamps everything, and Guido has
flooded European galleries with trashy and
empty pretentiousness, all the more noxious
in that its apparent grace of sentiment and
form misleads the unwary into approval, and
the dilettante dabbler into cheap raptures.
Both in Rome and wherever else Guido Reni
worked he introduced increased softness of style,
which was then designated aš the modern
method. His pictures are mostly Scriptural
or mythologic in subject, and between two
and three hundred of them are to be found in
various European collections - more than a
hundred of these containing life-sized
figures.. The portraits which Guido Reni executed
are few - those of Sixtus V., Cardinal Spada
and the so-called Beatrice Cenci being among
the most noticeable. The identity of the
last-named portrait is very dubious; it
certainly cannot have been painted direct
from Beatrice, who had been executed in Rome
before Guido ever resided there.. Many
etchings are attributed to him - some from
his own works, and some after other masters;
they are spirited, but rather negligent.- Guido Reni oil painting portrait Italy painting portraits - Guido Reni oil painting portrait–Guido Reni Bio by Italy oil painting Guido Reni supplier of Italy oil painting portraits, oil painting portraits and oil painting portrait art.
Of other works not already noticed, the
following should be named: - in Rome (the
Vatican), the " Crucifixion of St Peter," an
example of the painter's earlier manner; in
S. Lorenzo in Lucina, " Christ Crucified ";
in Forll, the " Conception "; in Bologna,
the " Alms of St Roch " (early), the "
Massacre of the Innocents," and the " Pieta,
or Lament over the Body of Christ " (in the
church of the Mendicanti), which is by many
regarded as Guido's prime executive work; in
the Dresden Gallery, an " Ecce Homo "; in
Milan (Brera Gallery), "Saints Peter and
Paul"; in Genoa (church of S. Ambrogio), the
" Assumption of the Virgin "; in Berlin, "
St Paul the Hermit and St Anthony in the
Wilderness." The celebrated picture of "
Fortune (in the Capitol) is one of Reni's
finest treatments of female form; as a
specimen of male form, the " Samson Drinking
from the Jawbone of an Ass " might be named
beside it. One of his latest works of mark
is the " Ariadne," which used to be in the
Gallery of the Capitol. The Louvre contains
twenty of his pictures, the National Gallery
of London seven, and others were once there,
now removed to other public collections. The
most interesting of the seven is the small "
Coronation of the Virgin," painted on
copper, an elegantly finished work, more
pretty than beautiful. It was probably
painted before the master quitted Bologna
for Rome. |
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