Guercino

Guercino
Self portrait, c. 1635
Born	Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-02-08)February 8, 1591 Cento, Duchy of Ferrara
Died	December 22, 1666(1666-12-22) (aged 75) Bologna, Papal States
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting, drawing
Movement	Baroque

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),^[1] better known as (il) Guercino^[2] (Italian pronunciation: [ɡwerˈtʃiːno]), was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner contrasts with the classical equilibrium of his later works. His many drawings are noted for their luminosity and lively style.

YouTube Encyclopedic

1/5
Views:
18 626
771
664
1 723
861

Transcription

Male voiceover: Well, here we are looking at Guercino's painting of St. Luke painting the Virgin and Child, or St. Luke at the easel. This is an interesting painting to talk about from several respects. Female voiceover: Luke was one of the four evangelists - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John [unintelligible]. Male voiceover: He was one of the four evangelists writing one of the four gospels that makes up the Christian Bible. Female voiceover: But, he was also a painter. Male voiceover: He was also believed to be a painter and Christians of the time, and some today, believe that he had actually painted first-hand images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. So he, for that reason, is also the patron saint of artists, because he was mostly known as being an evangelist, but he was also thought of as being a painter [unintelligible]. Female voiceover: Yeah, you know it makes me think about the whole Christian tradition of making images, and this desire to have the image connect directly to Christ and the apostles, and to marry and not to have any distance between the image and the reality. Male voiceover: Absolutely. This painting is interesting from that respect, in that it shows Luke as an artist. We also see in the background this inkwell with the [unintelligible] bowl, that is the allegorical symbol for St. Luke, sitting on top of a book, which we have to assume is the Gospel of St. Luke, one of the books of the Bible. It shows him in this dual respect, and in that sense, it's almost a rather traditional representation of St. Luke. It's also interesting, because we could talk about this as a very good example of a Baroque painting from the 17th century - this is from the 1650s - because as in other Baroque paintings that had started developing in the late 1500s, we have very naturalistic figures, a sense of classisizing figures, and architecture and clothing. Everything is relatively simple. There's not a lot of things going on in the painting. We have large figures in the foreground. There's not a lot of distracting things in the background. There's a rational sense of space, and depth, and light and so on. For all these respects, formally speaking, it's a pretty traditional Baroque painting. Female voiceover: Right, that makes sense. Male voiceover: What's maybe most interesting about this painting is how we can also think of it, to a certain extent, as a Counter-Reformation painting. Female voiceover: Sort of reaffirming the importance of images for the church? Male voiceover: Absolutely. For the Catholic church, we can think of this painting as a response that the Catholics are giving toward the Protestant Reformation. For many decades at this point, for over a hundred years, the Protestant church, especially in northern Europe, had been criticizing the Catholics for many aspects of their devotion and religious practice. One of the main targets of the Protestant critics was religious art. Female voiceover: In fact, religious images were being destroyed in Protestant countries. Male voiceover: In some parts, they were going around tearing paintings down, gouging out sculptures' eyes, smashing and destroying things. Female voiceover: Destroying images of saints. Male voiceover: Exactly, because generally speaking, the criticism was that art was not good, according to the Protestants, for religious purposes, because it was distracting. You would be distracted by the artist's skill, or the beauty of the painting, or the eroticism of the figures. Female voiceover: You could even be fooled into worshiping the image iteself instead of the ideas behind the image. Male voiceover: The Protestants said that was a great, great danger, that you could be so astounded by a painting by Leonardo that you would end up worshiping the image more than the message was trying to convey. Female voiceover: That does happen. Male voiceover: Absolutely. Female voiceover: People worship images and think that they have magical powers. Male voiceover: Rather than images, the Protestants had said the primary focus of your devotion, the primary tool for devotion and religious meditation, should instead be text, the word of the actual Bible itself. Female voiceover: Just saying that, in and of itself, is an attack on the church, because one of the things that they were saying was that the church, in all of its practices and rituals, had gotten away from what Christ actually wrote in the Bible, and encouraged a going back and a close reading of the real text, not just listening to the words of the priest and the practices of the church. Male voiceover: Right, saying that the authority was the text itself. It was written about Christ, rather than ... Female voiceover: The Pope. Male voiceover: [Unintelligible] archbishop telling you what to think. Female voiceover: It was a pretty radical thing to say. Male voiceover: It was very radical. That's why they got in so much trouble. Female voiceover: Big trouble. Male voiceover: In any case, after decades of this Protestant criticiism, and the Protestant churches - the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and so on - are growing stronger and stronger. The Catholic church needed to formulate its response beginning in the mid-1500s, and this is the period known as the Counter-Reformation. One of the things that the Catholics do in the Counter-Reformation ... Female voiceover: The Counter-Reformation means against the Reformation. Male voiceover: Exactly. It's the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. Some people even call it the Catholic Reformation, rather than the Protestant Reformation. One of the main points of the Catholic Counter-Reformation is that they're justifying the use of art. They're saying that art is an important religious tool, and one of the most straightforward reasons that they claimed it was, was that, of course, even though literacy had grown tremendously, still most people did not know how to read. The Catholics respond to the Protestants, "How can we tell people that the Bible is their main devotional tool if they can't even read, and if books are still relatively rare objects?" Instead, they say - Catholics - that religious images, altar pieces in churches, devotional images in your house, these are more useful than books because everyone can understand what they're about. They're immediately accessible. You don't have to know how to read and, as some people still say today, a picture can be worth a thousand words. You can communicate things with images that are impossible to communicate with written words on the page. Here in this painting, what we have is not only a celebration of a painter - St. Luke, according to Catholic belief - but this is really a very pointed, a very rhetorical defense of painted religious images, and it even suggests that painting is even more important than the written word. Let's talk about how we see that in this painting. Of course, we have St. Luke sitting at the easel with his palette and brushes. Look how he turns, looks at the viewer and gestures towards his painting of the Virgin and Child, as if to say, "Look at what I'm doing. "This is what I'm painting." In the background, we have an angel looking over his shoulder, looking pleasantly at the painting, representing Divine approvation, as if God and the angels in Heaven ... Female voiceover: [Unintelligible] him to ... Male voiceover: Looking on approvingly, as St. Luke is painting this painting. Female voiceover: Just like God inspired the gospels, so God inspired the painting [unintelligible]. Male voiceover: Absolutely, or at least approves of them. Then, what else do we see in the painting? Remember, of course, in a Baroque painting, nothing is included accidentally or for no reason. When we look over at the right side, as we mentioned, there's this inkwell and the book. Female voiceover: But, he's turned his back on them. Male voiceover: The pen is in the inkwell. The book is closed. There's this weight on top of it, and as you said, he's literally turned his back on the written word in order to focus on the painting. Female voiceover: When you look at this, and you think, "Mary and the Christ child "in this devotional image to inspire prayer", and you think, "Which is going to inspire prayer? "This?" Male voiceover: Right. Female voiceover: Well, this works for me. Male voiceover: Exactly, it's a very, very rhetorical image. We need to understand this painting in terms of the dialogue, the conflict, between the Protestants and the Catholics, in terms of the Protestants saying, "Focus on the text," and the Catholics defending the use of images. We should also add that the Protestants liked St. Luke quite a lot, even though generally, they were a little bit averse to the cult of saints. They did like St. Luke, as well as the other evangelists, because he was a writer. Here we have the Catholics celebrating him as a painter. It's as if they're saying, "Look, Protestants, you like St. Luke. "You think he's a great hero because he was a writer, "but he was also a painter and therefore, you cannot criticize painting," ... Female voiceover: You deny the power [unintelligible]. Male voiceover: Because one of the great heroes of the church was a painter, and made religious images according to their belief. Female voiceover: It's the church continually needing to justify, throughout its history at different moments, the use of images and their power. Male voiceover: Absolutely. Female voiceover: This image just speaks to that so perfectly. Male voiceover: It's a very good example of that.

Biography

The dramatic confrontation with mortality depicted in Guercino's *Et in Arcadia ego* (c. 1618–1622) marks the first known usage of this Latin motto (inscribed on the plinth beneath the skull).

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri was born into a family of peasant farmers in Cento, a town in the Po Valley mid-way between Bologna and Ferrara.^[4] Being cross-eyed, at an early age he acquired the nickname by which he is universally known, Guercino (a diminutive of the Italian noun guercio, meaning 'squinter').^[5] Mainly self-taught, at the age of 16, he worked as apprentice in the shop of Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School.^[6] An early commission was for the decoration with frescos (1615–1616^[7]) of Casa Pannini in Cento, where the naturalism of his landscapes already reveals considerable artistic independence, as do his landscapes on canvas Moonlit Landscape and Country Concert from the same era.^[8] In Bologna, he was winning the praise of Ludovico Carracci. He always acknowledged that his early style had been influenced by study of a Madonna painted by Ludovico Carracci for the Capuchin church in Cento, affectionately known as "La Carraccina".^[9]

St William Receiving the Monastic Habit (1620, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Italy),^[10] painted for St Gregory Church in Bologna, was Guercino's largest ecclesiastical commission at the time and is considered a high point of his early career.^[5]

His painting Et in Arcadia ego from around 1618–1622 contains the first known usage anywhere of the Latin motto, later taken up by Poussin and others, signifying that death lurks even in the most idyllic setting.^[11] The dramatic composition of this canvas (related to his Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo (1617–1618^[12]) created for The Grand Duke of Tuscany, which shares the same pair of shepherds^[13]) is typical of Guercino's early works, which are often tumultuous in conception.^[14] He painted two large canvases, Samson Seized by Philistines (1619) and Elijah Fed by Ravens (1620), for Cardinal Serra, a Papal Legate to Ferrara.^[15]^[16] Painted at a time when it is unlikely that Guercino could have seen Caravaggio's work in Rome, these works nevertheless display a starkly naturalistic Caravaggesque style.

Rome

Guercino was recommended by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio to the newly elected Bolognese Ludovisi Pope, Pope Gregory XV in 1621.^[17] The years he spent in Rome, 1621–23, were very productive. From this period are his frescoes Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi, the ceiling in San Crisogono (1622) of San Chrysogonus in Glory, the portrait of Pope Gregory XV (now in the Getty Museum), and the St. Petronilla Altarpiece for St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican (now in the Museo Capitolini).

Return to Bologna

Following the death of Gregory XV in 1623, Guercino returned to his hometown of Cento. In 1626, he began his frescoes in the Duomo of Piacenza. The details of his career after 1629 are well documented in the account book, the Libro dei Conti di Casa Barbieri, that Guercino and his brother Paolo Antonio Barbieri, a notable painter of still lifes, kept updated, and which has been preserved.^[18] Between 1618 and 1631, Giovanni Battista Pasqualini produced 67 engravings that document the early production of Guercino, which is not included in the Libro dei Conti.^[19] In 1642, following the death of his commercial rival Guido Reni, Guercino moved his busy workshop to Bologna, where he was now able to take over Reni's role as the city's leading painter of sacred subjects. In 1655, the Franciscan Order of Reggio paid him 300 ducats for the altarpiece of Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Madonna and Child (now in Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City).^[20] The Corsini also paid him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.

Style

Guercino was remarkable for the extreme rapidity of his executions: he completed no fewer than 106 large altarpieces for churches, and his other paintings amount to about 144. He was also a prolific draftsman. His production includes many drawings, usually in ink, washed ink, or red chalk. Most of them were made as preparatory studies for his paintings, but he also drew landscapes, genre subjects, and caricatures for his own enjoyment. Guercino's drawings are known for their fluent style in which "rapid, calligraphic pen strokes combined with dots, dashes, and parallel hatching lines describe the forms".^[21]

Despite presumably having monocular vision due to a 'lazy' right eye, Guercino showed remarkable facility to imply depth in his works, perhaps assisted by an enhanced perception of light and shade thanks to compensation by the healthy eye.^[22] Other artists with different types of strabismus include Rembrandt, Dürer, Degas, Picasso and (possibly) Leonardo da Vinci.^[23]

His lively treatment of the Aurora myth (1621, Villa Aurora, Rome, Italy), painted for the pope's nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi.^[24] challenges the more measured representation of the same subject painted by Guido Reni at Palazzo Rospigliosi on behalf of a Ludovisi family rival and makes a statement of political triumph.^[25] Some of his later works are closer to the style of Reni, and are painted with much greater luminosity and clarity than his early works with their prominent use of chiaroscuro.

Pupils

Guercino continued to paint and teach until the end of his life, amassing a notable fortune. He died on December 22, 1666, in Bologna.^[26] As he never married, his estate passed to his nephews and pupils, Benedetto Gennari II and Cesare Gennari.^[5] Other pupils include Giulio Coralli,^[27] Giuseppe Bonati of Ferrara,^[28] Cristoforo Serra of Cesena,^[29] Father Cesare Pronti of Ferrara,^[30] Sebastiano Ghezzi,^[31] Sebastiano Bombelli,^[32] Lorenzo Bergonzoni of Bologna,^[33] Francesco Paglia of Brescia.,^[34] Benedetto Zallone of Cento, Bartolomeo Caravoglia,^[35] Giuseppe Maria Galeppini of Forli, and Matteo Loves.

Works

Moonlit Landscape (c. 1616, oil on canvas, 55 × 71 cm, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden).^[36] An early, naturalistic landscape.
Harvesting (1615–1617, fresco, transferred to canvas, 18 × 23.5 cm, Pinacoteca, Cento, Italy). One of the frescos created (with the assistance of Lorenzo Gennari^[4]) for Casa Pannini in Cento.^[37]
Susanna and the Elders (1617, oil on canvas, 176 × 208 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain) was painted in Bologna for Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, the future Pope Gregory XV.^[38] The dramatic dynamism of this early work contrasts with the studied classicism of the artist's later depiction of the same story in 1649–1650.^[39]
Samson Seized by the Philistines, 1619 This work depicts the biblical scene where Samson is betrayed by his lover Delilah. Samson is at the center, though his face cannot be seen, and surrounding him are the Philistines who have come to blind him after cutting off his hair, his source of strength.

Return of the Prodigal Son, 1619
St William Receiving the Monastic Habit, 1620
Aurora, 1621 (ceiling fresco, tempera), Villa Aurora, Rome, Italy
Capturing Christ, 1621
Saint Matthew and the Angel, 1622
La morte di Didone, 1631
Christ and the Woman of Samaria II, c. 1640–1641
Atlas holding up the celestial globe, 1646
St Peter Weeping before the Virgin, 1647
Mars with Cupid, 1649
Cleopatra and Octavian, 1649
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife, 1649, National Gallery of Art
St. Cecilia, 1649
Susanna and the Elders, 1650
David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1650
The Vocation of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, 1650
Personification of Astrology, ca. 1650–1655, Blanton Museum of Art, Texas
The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1651
King David, 1651
Samson and Delilah, 1654
Saint Jerome, c.1640–1650

Exhibitions

A groundbreaking exhibition held at the Archiginnasio of Bologna in 1968 provided the most complete panorama of Guercino's work to date, including paintings from the later parts of his career after the death of Pope Gregory XV, which had previously attracted relatively little attention.^[39] For the fourth centenary of the artist's birth in 1991, an expanded exhibition was organized by the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna in conjunction with the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.^[40] Both these exhibitions were curated by Guercino's biggest modern champion, Denis Mahon, who was responsible for their catalogues.^[41] In 2011–2012, a large exhibition was displayed at Palazzo Barberini in Rome, dedicated to the memory of Mahon, who had recently died.^[42] An exhibition displayed at the National Museum in Warsaw in 2013–2014 offered another extensive presentation of the artist's work.^[43]

Citations

^ Miller, 1964
^ "Beside the easel". besidetheeasel.blogspot.se. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
^ "Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino – Ottavio Leoni". www.ngv.vic.gov.au. National Gallery of Victoria. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
^ ^a ^b Mahon, 1937a
^ ^a ^b ^c Turner, 2003
^ Griswold 1991, p. 6
^ "Casa Pannini di Cento". www.geoplan.it (in Italian). Retrieved 8 February 2019.
^ Stone, pp. 3, 37.
^ "La Carraccina". bbcc.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.it (in Italian). Regione Emilia Romagna. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
^ "San Guglielmo d'Aquitania riceve l'abito religioso da San Felice Vescovo. (Vestizione di San Guglielmo)". www.pinacotecabologna.beniculturali.it (in Italian). Retrieved 13 February 2019.
^ Lubbock, Tom (23 February 2007). "Guercino: Et in Arcadia Ego (1618–22)". The Independent. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
^ "Palazzo Pitti: Galleria Palatina – Apollo e Marsia". www.abcfirenze.com (in Italian).
^ "Et in Arcadia Ego by Guercino". www.wga.hu. Web Gallery of Art. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
^ Griswold 1991, p. 13
^ "Samson Captured by the Philistines". www.metmuseum.org. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
^ Vivian, 1971
^ Lawrence Gowing, ed., Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists, v.2 (Facts on File, 2005): 291.
^ Griswold 1991, p. 35
^ Gozzi, Fausto (2006). "Sacro e Profano nelle Incisioni da Guercino" (in Italian). Culturalia. Retrieved 12 February 2019.
^ "Guercino's Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved March 15, 2013.
^ Griswold 1991, p. 36
^ Scholtz et al, 2019
^ Tyler, CW (18 October 2018). "Evidence That Leonardo da Vinci Had Strabismus" (PDF). JAMA Ophthalmology. 137 (1): 82–86. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2018.3833. PMC 6439801. PMID 30347053.
^ Vodret and Gozzi, 2011, pp. 159–161
^ Unger, 2016, p. 9; "Aurora by Guercino". www.wga.hu. Web Gallery of Art. Retrieved 15 February 2019.
^ "Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) | The Vocation of Saint Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 2023-04-12.
^ Orlandi, 1719, p. 207
^ Orlandi, p. 207
^ Orlandi, p. 120.
^ Orlandi, p. 350.
^ Orlandi, p. 399
^ Orlandi, p. 397.
^ Orlandi, p. 294.
^ Orlandi, p. 171
^ Lanzi, 1847, pp. 309–310
^ "Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Il Guercino". emp-web-84.zetcom.ch. Nationalmuseum. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
^ "Barbieri Giovan Francesco, Mietitura". catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it. Fondazione Zeri, University of Bologna. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
^ "Susannah and the Elders - The Collection". Museo Nacional del Prado. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
^ ^a ^b Posner, 1968
^ Mahon, 1992, p. 7
^ van Serooskerken, 1991
^ Vodret and Gozzi, 2011
^ "Guercino. Triumf baroku" [Guercino. Triumph of the Baroque]. www.legitymizm.org (in Polish). Organizacja Monarchistów Polskich. Retrieved 12 February 2019.

References

Books and articles on Guercino

Griswold, William M (1991). "Guercino". Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 48 (4): 5–56. doi:10.2307/3258858. JSTOR 3258858.
Lanzi, Luigi (1847). History of Painting in Italy; From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Vol. III. Translated by Thomas Roscoe. London: Henry G. Bohn.
Mahon, Denis (1937a). "Notes on the Young Guercino I. – Cento and Bologna". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 70 (408): 112–122. JSTOR 866850.
Mahon, Denis (1937b). "Notes on the Young Guercino II. – Cento and Ferrara". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 70 (409): 177–189. JSTOR 866750.
Mahon, Denis (1992). Guercino: Master Painter of Baroque. National Gallery of Art. ISBN 978-0-89468-167-7.
Miller, Dwight C. (1964). "Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco detto il Guercino". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 6.
Orlandi, Pellegrino Antonio; Guarienti, Pietro (1719), Abecedario pittorico, Naples.
Posner, Donald (1968). "The Guercino Exhibition at Bologna". The Burlington Magazine. 110 (788): 596–607. JSTOR 875813.
Scholtz, Sibylle; MacMorris, Lee; Krogmann, Frank; Auffarth, Gerd U (2019). "Lights and darks of a picture. The life of Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, "il Guercino" – the squinter". Strabismus. 27 (1): 39–42. doi:10.1080/09273972.2019.1559532. PMID 30626256. S2CID 58585811. (subscription required)
van Serooskerken, Carel van Tuyll (1991). "Guercino. Bologna, Cento and Frankfurt". The Burlington Magazine. 133 (1065): 864–868. JSTOR 885077.
Stone, David M (1991). Guercino: Catalogo Completo Dei Dipinti (in Italian). Cantini. ISBN 978-88-7737-137-9.
Turner, Nicholas (2003). "Guercino". Oxford Art Online. Oxford Art Online (Grove Art). doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t035416. ISBN 9781884446054. (subscription required)
Unger, Daniel M (2016). Guercino's Paintings and His Patrons' Politics in Early Modern Italy. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-56482-3.
Vivian, Frances (1971). "Guercino Seen from the Archivio Barberini". The Burlington Magazine. 113 (814): 22–29. JSTOR 876502.
Vodret, Rossella; Gozzi, Fausto (2011). Guercino (1591–1666): capolavori da Cento e da Roma (in Italian). Giunti. ISBN 9788809775350.

External links

External videos

Guercino's Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin, Smarthistory

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Guercino.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco".

53 artworks by or after Guercino at the Art UK site
Paintings by Guercino on the Web Gallery of Art
Getty exhibition of Guercino drawings
Encyclopædia Britannica, Il Guercino
Pinacoteca Civica Il Guercino
Virtual exhibition "Guercino a Fano" in high resolution
Jusepe de Ribera, 1591–1652, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Guercino (see index)
Velázquez , an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Guercino (see index)