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 :. | Portrait de lartiste tenant une palette | Samson brings the parents the Honiguabe | Angels Weeping over the Dead Christ hj | St William of Aquitaine Receiving the Cowln ngb | Virgin and Child with the Patron Saints of Modena |
Related Artists:
Marquis, James Richard
Irish, Scottish heritage, Active 1835-85
Pieter Cornelisz. van Rijck
painted Still Life with Two Figures, Dimensions in 1622
NOVELLI, Pietro
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1603-1647 Italian painter. He trained with his father, Pietro Antonio Novelli (1568-1625), a painter and mosaicist, then in 1618 in Palermo with Vito Carrera (1555-1623). He also studied perspective with the mathematician Carlo Maria Ventimiglia. Paolini (1980) suggested that in his early years Novelli may have contributed, with Domenico Fiasella and Nicolas Tournier, to a cycle of paintings in the oratory of S Stefano in Palermo and that he made a first journey to Rome between 1622 and 1625. His first dated work is from 1626: St Anthony Abbot (Palermo, S Antonio Abate). The development of his style owed much to Anthony van Dyck, who visited Sicily in 1624 and whose altarpiece, the Madonna of the Rosary (Palermo, oratory of S Maria del Rosario), was of fundamental importance to Novelli. Van Dyck's influence, which remained with Novelli throughout his career, is most apparent in the Death of the Just Man (Palermo, Gal. Reg. Sicilia), the Apparition of the Virgin to St Andrea Corsini (1630; Palermo, Chiesa del Carmine) and the Coronation of the Virgin