Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1591-1666 best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for squinter, a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed. He is especially noted for his many superb drawings. Guercino was born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara. By the age of 17 he was associated with Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School. By 1615 he moved to Bologna, where his work earned the praise of an elder Ludovico Carracci. He painted two large canvases, Elijah Fed by Ravens and Samson Seized by Philistines, in what appears to be a stark naturalist Caravaggesque style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggios first-hand). They were painted for Cardinal Serra, Papal Legate to Ferrara. The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego) was painted in 1618 contemporary with The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo in Palazzo Pitti. His first style, he often claimed, was influenced by a canvas of Carracci in Cento. Some of his later pieces approach rather to the manner of his great contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness. Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime. He was then recommended by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio to the Bolognese Ludovisi Pope, Pope Gregory XV. His two years (1621-23) spent in Rome were very productive. From this stay date his frescoes of Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi and the ceiling in San Crisogono (1622) of San Chrysogonus in Glory; his portrait of Pope Gregory (now in the Getty Museum, and, what is considered his masterpiece, The Burial of Saint Petronilla or St. Petronilla Altarpiece, for the Vatican (now in the Museo Capitolini). The Franciscan order of Reggio in 1655 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). The Corsini also paid him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.   Related Paintings of GUERCINO :. | Aurora ihi | St Augustine | The Return of the Prodigal son | St Augustine Washing the Feet of the Redeemer kg | The Flagellation of Christ dg |
Related Artists:
Theodor Horschelt
(1829 -1871 ) - Watercolours
Leslie Ward
British Illustrator caricaturist and portrait painter , (1851-1922), was a British portrait artist and caricaturist who drew or painted numerous portraits which were regularly published by Vanity Fair, under the pseudonym "Spy". Ward was one of eight children of artists Edward Matthew Ward and Henrietta Ward, and the great-grandson of the artist James Ward. Although they had the same surname before marriage, Ward's parents were not related. Both were well-known history painters, his mother coming from a line of painters and engravers, including her father, the engraver and miniature painter George Raphael Ward, and her grandfather, the celebrated animal painter James Ward. She was niece and great-niece respectively of the portrait painter John Jackson and the painter George Morland. Both parents had studios in their homes in Slough in Buckinghamshire and Kensington in London, where they regularly entertained the London artistic and literary elite. Ward's father was a gifted mimic who entertained Charles Dickens and other eminent guests. Although they never gave their son formal training, they and their artistic friends encouraged the young Ward to draw, paint, and sculpt.[1] Ward had started caricaturing while still at school at Eton in Windsor, using his classmates and school masters as subjects. In 1867 his bust of his brother was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London. At school Ward had been an unexceptional student, and after he left Eton in 1869 his father encouraged him to train as an architect. Ward was too afraid to tell his father that he wanted to be an artist and he spent an unhappy year in the office of the architect Sydney Smirke, who was a family friend.
Werner van den Valckert
Though he was born in Amsterdam, he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in the Hague between 1600 - 1605. By 1614 he had moved to Amsterdam, because his daughter was baptized there. His earliest dated etchings are from 1612. His surviving paintings are historical allegories and portraits. He also made a prestigious schutterstuk, which features the Amsterdam burgermeester Albert Burgh. According to Houbraken, he was a student of Hendrik Goltzius. He painted a series of 4 paintings showing a doctor as angel, Christ, a man, and the devil; these were all based on engravings by Goltzius. These paintings are now in the possession of the Boerhaave Museum, which has other similar series on display.