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 :. | The Return of the Prodigal son | Raising of Lazarus hjf | The Vistion of St.Francesca Romana | St.Peter Revives Tabitha | assumption of the Virgin |
Related Artists:
Jean-Jacques Henner
1829-1905 French Jean Jacques Henner Galleries French painter. He was born into a peasant family in the Sundgau and received his first artistic training at Altkirch with Charles Goutzwiller (1810-1900) and later in Strasbourg in the studio of Gabriel-Christophe Gu?rin (1790-1846). In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of Michel-Martin Drolling and, from 1851, of Francois-Edouard Picot. While a student he was particularly drawn to portraiture, and during his frequent visits to Alsace he made portraits of his family as well as of the notables of the region. He also painted scenes of Alsatian peasant life.
GUARDI, Gianantonio
Italian Rococo Era Painter, ca.1699-1761
George Carter
an artist of considerable merit, was born at Colchester. He was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy in 1775, when he sent 'A Wounded Hussar on the Field of Battle.' He afterwards painted 'The Dying Pilgrim,' 'The Siege of Gibraltar,' and many portraits. He is known as the painter of 'The Death of Captain Cook,' 'The Fisherman's Return,' and other popular works, which have been engraved. He died at Hendon in 1795.