Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Guido Reni

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Guido Reni
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

(born Nov. 4, 1575, Bologna, Papal States — died Aug. 18, 1642, Bologna) Italian painter. Apprenticed to the Flemish painter Denis Calvaert at 10, he was later influenced by the novel naturalism of the Carracci family of his native Bologna, the frescoes of Raphael, and ancient Greco-Roman sculpture. He executed many important commissions in Rome, including the celebrated ceiling fresco Aurora (1613 – 14). In his religious and mythological works, he tempered Baroque exuberance and complexity with Classical restraint, tender emotion, and delicate colouring. Until John Ruskin scorned him in the 19th century, he was highly regarded; his status as one of the great painters of the 17th century has since been reestablished.

For more information on Guido Reni, visit Britannica.com.

Search unanswered questions...

Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Art Encyclopedia: Guido Reni
Top
Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Art Encyclopedia

(b Bologna, 4 Nov 1575; d Bologna, 18 Aug 1642). Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was one of the greatest and most influential of the 17th-century Italian painters, whose sophisticated and complex art dominated the Bolognese school. A classicizing artist, deeply influenced by Greco-Roman art and by Raphael but also by the mannered elegance of Parmigianino's paintings, he sought an ideal beauty; his work was especially celebrated for its compositional and figural grace. In his religious art he was concerned with the expression of intense emotion, often charged with pathos; according to his biographer Malvasia, he boasted that he 'could paint heads with their eyes uplifted a hundred different ways' to give form to a state of ecstasy or divine inspiration. He was a subtle yet bold colourist, moving from the brilliant colour of his early paintings to the light tonalities and cool, silvery palette of his later work.

See the Abbreviations for further details.


Biography: Guido Reni
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Biographies

The Italian painter Guido Reni (1575-1642) is known for the gentle, highly decorative form of baroque classicism he developed.

Guido Reni was born in Bologna on Nov. 4, 1575. He began his apprenticeship under the mannerist painter Denis Calvaert and then entered the new, more progressive art school run by the Carracci. Their influence was to prove decisive. The Carracci opposed mannerism and urged instead a return to the generalized realism of the great masters of the High Renaissance, above all to Raphael, Titian, and Veronese.

Reni's personal life is a delight to those who insist that artists must be peculiar. He was, according to contemporary reports, neither heterosexual nor homosexual but absolutely sexless. His obsessive fear of women reached the point where he believed their slightest touch might poison him. The discovery of a woman's blouse that had found its way into his laundry left him terrified. Even in his own day there was thought to be a relationship between the asceticism of his life and the subdued, withdrawn quality of his art.

During the first years of the 17th century Reni spent much time in Rome. At first the fame of Caravaggio overwhelmed him. In the Crucifixion of St. Peter (ca. 1603) Reni tried as best he could to imitate Caravaggio's rough peasant types and deep shadows. At the same time, through the rather formal poses of the figures and the careful symmetry of the composition, he attempted to maintain his native Bolognese classicism.

But Reni soon abandoned this uneasy compromise. By 1609 he had replaced Annibale Carracci as the leader of baroque classicism in Rome. The Aurora fresco that Reni painted in the Casino of the Pallavicini-Rospigliosi palace in Rome (1614) is justly famous for its crisp, Hellenistic elegance.

After Reni returned to Bologna in 1614, his formalism became still more accentuated. In Atalanta and Hippomenes (ca. 1625) the coldly impersonal nude figures, though shown in the act of running a race, are frozen like fragments of ancient marble statues that have been cemented into a wall so as to form abstract linear patterns.

Late in life Reni developed what 17th-century critics called his second manner. In paintings such as Cleopatra and Girl with a Wreath (ca. 1635) we no longer see elaborate arrangements of poses or garment folds. Their place is taken by a play not of line but of color, of paint laid on thinly in loose, open brushstrokes. The many pale, commingled hues are all grayed over, so that their color harmonies, at times almost painfully delicate, can be read only with intensive study. Reni died on Aug. 18, 1642, in Bologna.

Further Reading

The standard work on Reni is in Italian. In English, see the sections on him in Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 (1962; 2d ed. 1965), and in E. K. Waterhouse, Italian Baroque Painting (1962; 2d ed. 1969). The chapter on Reni in Robert Enggass and Jonathan Brown, Sources and Documents in the History of Art: Italy and Spain, 1600-1750 (1970), gives an interesting picture of Reni's strange personality as seen through 17th-century eyes.

Additional Sources

Malvasia, Carlo Cesare, conte, The life of Guido Reni, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Guido Reni
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopedia - People
Reni, Guido (gwē'dō rĕ'nē), 1575-1642, Italian painter and engraver, b. Bologna. As a child he entered the studio of the Flemish painter Denis Calvaert. He was for a short time (c.1595) a pupil of the Carracci, who were then at the height of their popularity. By 1598 he had been commissioned by the government to execute decorative frescoes for the facade of the Palazzo Pubblico. Shortly after 1600 he made the first of his many trips to Rome, which was to become the center of his activities until 1614. He became a rival of Caravaggio, whose work clearly influenced his famous Crucifixion of St. Peter (Vatican). He worked (c.1608-c.1609) on frescoes in the Church of San Gregorio Magno (Rome). There, in his God the Father above a Concert of Angels, he displays the grandeur of style and glittering tonality characteristic of his most renowned work, the Aurora fresco of 1613, in the Rospigliosi Palace, Rome. In 1620 he began the frescoes and the altarpiece Israelites Gathering the Manna, in the cathedral at Ravenna. During the latter part of his life he returned to Bologna, where he established his own academy. Among his many works in European museums are Atalanta and Hippomenes (Prado) and Ecce Homo (versions in the National Gall., London, and the Louvre) and Mater Dolorosa (versions in the Corsini Gall., Rome, and in Berlin). He made engravings of his own and others artists' works. In spite of his voluptuous sentimentality, Guido's abilities surpassed those of most of his Bolognese contemporaries. During the 17th and 18th cent. he was held in great esteem.

Bibliography

See study by D. S. Pepper (1984).

Wikipedia: Guido Reni
Top
Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
Guido Reni

Self portrait, c. 1602.
Born November 4, 1575(1575-11-04)
Bologna
Died August 18, 1642 (aged 66)
Bologna
Nationality Italian
Field Painting
Movement Baroque

Guido Reni (4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style.

Contents

Biography

Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on 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's painting was thematic and eclectic in style.

Work in Rome

By late 1601, Reni and Albani had moved to Rome[1] to work with the teams led by Annibale Carracci in fresco decoration of the Farnese Palace. During 1601-1604, his main patron was Cardinal Sfondrati. By 1604-1605, he received an independent commission for an altarpiece of the Crucifixion of St. Peter. After a few year sojourn in Bologna, he returned to Rome to become one of the premier painters during the papacy of Paul V (Borghese). From 1607-1614, he was one of the painters patronized by the Borghese family.

Abduction of Deianira, 1620-1621.

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[2]; the rear portion overlooks the Piazza Montecavallo and Palazzo del Quirinale[3]. The massive fresco is framed in quadri riportati and depicts Apollo in his Chariot preceded by Dawn (Aurora) bringing light to the world[4]. 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[5] in the Farnese. Reni in this painting 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 Caravaggio's followers. Payments showed that he was paid in 247 scudi and 54 baiocchi upon completion on 24 September 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. However, because he felt underpaid by the ministers, the artist left for Bologna, leaving the role of the preeminent artist in Rome to Domenichino.

Work in Naples and return to Bologna

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

St Dominic's Glory crowning the Arca di San Domenico.

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[6]. In contrast his Crucifixion and his Atlanta and Hipomenes[1] 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. In 1625 Prince Władysław Sigismund Vasa of Poland visited the artist workshop in Bologna during his voyage to Western Europe.[7] The close rapport between the painter and the Polish Prince resulted in the acquisitions of drawings and paintings.[7] In 1630, he painted the Pallion del Voto with images of St. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, painted during the plague of 1630 that attacked Bologna.

The Archangel Michael, painted for the Capucins' Church in Rome.
Penitent Magdalene, ca. 1635, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Reni's sensuous, sentimental images are among his most popular works.
Stone slab over the tomb of Guido Reni.

His most distinguished pupil was Simone Cantarini, named "Il Pesarese"; he painted a 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. Other pupils were Giacomo Semenza, Francesco Gessi, and Marco Bandinelli. His themes are mostly biblical and mythological in subject. He painted few portraits; those of Sixtus V, Bernardino Cardinal Spada, and the so‑called Beatrice Cenci are among the most noticeable. The identity of the Cenci portrait is very doubtful, since Beatrice Cenci was executed in Rome before Reni ever lived there and so could not have sat for the portrait. Many etchings are attributed to Guido Reni, some after his own paintings and some after other masters. They are spirited, in a light style of delicate lines and dots. Reni's technique was used by the Bolognese school and was the standard for Italian printmakers of his time.[8]

Reni died in Bologna in 1642.

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

Partial anthology of works

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.

Gallery

David with the Head of Goliath (1605, Oil on canvas, 220 x 145 cm) at Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The Rape of Europa (1630s) at The National Gallery, London. It was made for King Władysław IV of Poland.[9]

Adoration of the Shepherds by Reni

Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 1631

References

  • 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 (exhibition 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
  • "Printmaking". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 29 March 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-28344>

References

  1. ^ Guido Reni: A Review Reviewed,Stephen D. Pepper; Richard E. Spear. The Burlington Magazine (1990)132(10): p219-223.
  2. ^ Casino dell'Aurora Pallavicini. Conference center - Rome, Italy
  3. ^ Google Maps
  4. ^ Aurora by RENI, Guido
  5. ^ Image Files-Frescos
  6. ^ The victorious Samson (Wikicommons)
  7. ^ a b (Polish) "Kunstkammer of Władysław Vasa". kunstkammer_painting.html. http://swiadectwotestimony.republika.pl/kunstkammer_painting.html. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
  8. ^ printmaking :: Italy - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
  9. ^ (English) "The Rape of Europa". www.nationalgallery.org.uk. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=L898. Retrieved 2008-08-27. 
Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Guido Reni
Search Wikisource Wikisource has the text of the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article Guido Reni.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Guido Reni".  Read more