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 :. | Samson and Delilah | Allegory of Painting and Sculpture sdg | Mary Magdalene in Penitence | Personification of Astrology | Saint Gregory the Great with Saints Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier |
Related Artists:
Thomas Craskell
painted Knowles action off Havana in1758.
Aleksander Gierymski
Warsaw 1850-1901 Rome, Brother of Maks Gierymski. He studied (1867) at the Warsaw Drawing Class, then (1868-73) at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in Munich under Georg Hiltensperger (1806-90) and Alexander Strehuber (1814-82), and later under Karl Theodor von Piloty. While in Munich he contributed illustrations to Polish, German and Austrian magazines. On a visit to Venice and Verona in 1871 he was especially impressed by the work of 15th-century Venetian artists; this new enthusiasm was reflected in his prize-winning painting of a subject set by the Munich Akademie, a scene from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1872; destr., see Starzynski, pl. 4). After accompanying his dying brother Maks to various spa towns and other locations, he settled in Rome in mid-1874. Two genre scenes from this period, Roman Tavern and A Game of Mora (both 1874; Warsaw, N. Mus.), show the influence of Dutch painting. Gierymski remained in Italy until 1879, mostly resident in Rome.
Charles Lennox-Wright
painted Catching a dream in before 1932