GUERCINO

Fra Bonaventura Bisi (1601-1659), called “Il Pittorino” or “Padre Pittorino,” was a Franciscan friar from the convent of San Francesco, Bologna. He was well known as a practicing engraver and miniature painter. He became a good friend of Guercino.

Guercino’s warm and subtle portrait of his friend and fellow painter shows the aging friar as a thin and fragile man. The canvas displays Guercino’s consummate technique in rendering the flesh tones and the moist eyes of Bisi. The sitter holds a red-chalk portrait of hiss patron Alfonso IV d’Este.

Guercino, one of the best known Bolognese artists of the generation after the Carracci, painted this altarpiece in 1616 for the church of San Agostino in his native town of Cento between Bologna and Ferrara. However uncertain the identification of the young donor with the son of a benefactor of the church (Giuseppe Gaetano Righetti?) may be, what is certain is that this is a key work in the master’s youthful oeuvre. In it he follows a balanced compositional structure that had been developed earlier by the Carracci. The painting differs from a preparatory sketch - kept at Brera in Milan - by a stricter application of symmetry: both in the upper register, with the Madonna and the angels at the same height, and below, where Saints Louis of France, Joseph, Francis of Assisi and Augustine, the patron saint of the church in question, direct Mary’s attention on both sides to the donor, and in the other direction point his devotion upwards to her in a double arc.

The balanced structure is echoed in the dialogue between the heavy pillar and the view into an airy distance in the middle, enlivened by the very varied lighting, gestures and expression of the figures. The drawing is accurate and the colour range sonorous, consonant with Guercino’s reputation as both a great draughtsman and an excellent colourist, a reputation that he already enjoyed as a young man. Ludovico, the eldest of the Carracci, already praised Guercino for this, adding that he was a wonder of nature, who filled with amazement everyone who saw his work.

Despite its major impact on European art, the fame of Bolognese painting did not last. To a certain extent it was the victim of its success, when a sugary variant came to dominate the official religious art of the 19th century in the relatively uninspired form of the Saint-Sulpice style, placing the Bolognese school in an unfavourable light amongst leading 20th century artists and art historians. Whilst gaining new advocates after the Second World War, insufficient light has been placed on its role in the art history of the Low Countries. An unprejudiced viewing, not of a sugary, derivative work, but of an original masterpiece like this one, clearly shows this relative lack of attention to be unjustified.

Guercino is one of the most interesting personalities in seventeenth-century Bolognese art, and his activity in Rome made him an important influence on all Italian painting. More than from Venice and Correggio, his work derives from Dosso Dossi and the school of Ferrara. This painting represents one of the high points of Guercino’s mature style. Its restoration by the Brera’s laboratory has revealed the original colours and eliminated the yellowish patina that obfuscated and partially hid the composition.

The painting is built up on a measured circular rhythm, and the prominent gestures of the figures are emphasized almost to the point of theatricality. Little Ishmael is crying and leaning his head against Hagar. As she consoles him and holds out a handkerchief, she turns toward Abraham, who stands stern and still, making a gesture of repudiation. Sarah, seen from behind, appears to be moving away from the scene. The low-keyed colour helps avoid any rhetorical suggestion, while the slow rhythm of the composition creates a sense of inevitability.

The city of Cento commissioned this painting, which was then presented to the Cardinal Legate of Ferrara, Lorenzo Imperiali.

Recent literature connected this picture to a 1637 payment made to Guercino by the community of Cento for a Pittura e Scultura, a canvas that the city presented to Cardinal Colonna, Archbishop of Cento. This is confirmed by the high quality of the picture, and by stylistic characteristics that place it solidly within Guercino’s production in the 1630’s. In this phase of his career, while not abandoning his rich, heavily impasted manner of painting, the drama of which is underscored by flickering flashes of light, Guercino was shifting (under the influence of Reni) towards more classical compositions and a less shrill chromatic range.

With the figures arranged with stern flatness along a single plane, the treatment of space in this painting is almost relief-like. This compositional restraint is broken only by the edge of “Painting”’s canvas, which juts audaciously out towards the viewer. The clean profile of the face of “Painting” is also notable: in its unnatural rigidity, it seems to derive from an engraving. Other passages, however, reveal the extreme pictorial liberties taken by Guercino who, for example, leaves the red ground of the canvas visible, using its tone for the rendering of shadows in the flesh. Also the thumb of “Painting” is shown realistically dirtied with actual paint; while the hand of “Sculpture” can be seen through the drapery of the statue she holds, as if the drapery is of real transparent cloth instead of marble.

The refined Cardinal Colonna, recipient of this gift, already possessed a choice collection of artworks. In the context of the commission, the allegorical theme of painting and sculpture can be considered Cento’s homage to the Archbishop’s passion for collecting and patronage of the arts.

A preparatory design for the figure of “Painting” has been found at the Teylers Museum (Haarlem, the Netherlands).

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 6 minutes):

Giuseppe Torelli: Sonata a cinque in D Major No. 7

In this painting Guercino used some of the motifs of his earlier works. The composition shows signs of the influence of Guido Reni.

This fresco decorates the (rather low) ceiling of the Casino, a summer house built for Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi at the Monte Pincio in Rome.

When he became pope under the name of Gregory XV, Alessandro Ludovisi invited Guercino to Rome, where he lived until 1623. His first job in Rome was to decorate the Ludovisi country house. The fresco of Aurora was set in frames painted by Agostino Tassi. The thirty-year-old Guercino unleashed all his flair and fantasy on this composition which has an extraordinarily lively feel to it. This was a direct challenge to Guido Reni. Only a few years earlier Reni had painted the same subject for the Rospigliosi country house, only in his case the result was an elegant, coldly classical, if typically graceful piece.

The picture shows the ceiling of the Sala dell’Aurora, the central room on the ground floor. It was painted by Guercino depicting Aurora on Her Triumphal Chariot. This composition was a deliberate response to Guido Reni’s Aurora in the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. Guercino’s coworker was Agostino Tassi who was responsible for the architecture (quadratura) painted in fresco technique. (Guercino painted in tempera instead of fresco.)

The ceiling painting in the Sala della Fama, the central hall on the second floor, is entirely allegorical. The central picture is designed as a fictive opening with only a few figures. In the centre hovers the personification of Fame in billowing robes, holding in her outstretched hands an extremely long trumpet and an olive branch as a symbol of peace. Flying in front of her is the brightly feathered phoenix of myth, which is reborn out of its own ashes every five hundred years and was therefore considered a symbol of eternal renewal, but was understood also as a link to virtue. In the lower part of the picture space personifications of Honour (Honos) and Virtue (Virtus) are seated on a dark gray cloud. Amor Virtutis in the form of a putto turns toward them with laurel wreath and crown.

When he became pope under the name of Gregory XV, Alessandro Ludovisi invited Guercino to Rome, where he lived until 1623. His first job in Rome was to decorate the Ludovisi country house. The fresco of Aurora was set in frames painted by Agostino Tassi. The thirty-year-old Guercino unleashed all his flair and fantasy on this composition which has an extraordinarily lively feel to it. This was a direct challenge to Guido Reni. Only a few years earlier Reni had painted the same subject for the Rospigliosi country house, only in his case the result was an elegant, coldly classical, if typically graceful piece.

The picture shows part of the ceiling painting depicting Aurora in Her Triumphal Chariot in the Sala dell’Aurora.

Aurora’s car is drawn by a pair of stamping brown-and-white horses.

The Sala dell’Aurora is only 5 m high, and the painted architecture provides the illusion of much greater height. It takes up the floor plan arrangement, but reinterprets it to open up two views above the long sides. Here the imaginary architecture gives way to landscape prospects behind painted balustrades. One view - shown here - takes up the motif of the cypresses and enlivens them with flying putti who hunt birds with switches.

The fictive architecture was painted by Agostino Tassi.

The Sala dell’Aurora is only 5 m high, and the painted architecture provides the illusion of much greater height. It takes up the floor plan arrangement, but reinterprets it to open up two views above the long sides. Here the imaginary architecture gives way to landscape prospects behind painted balustrades. In one - shown here - there is a building , rendered in extreme foreshortening and with cypresses to one side and amphorae decoratively placed on the parapet. It evokes a Roman villa of the type owned by Ludovisi.

The fictive architecture was painted by Agostino Tassi.

The ceiling painting in Sala della Fama, the central hall on the second floor, is entirely allegorical. The central picture is designed as a fictive opening with only a few figures. In the centre hovers the personification of Fame in billowing robes, holding in her outstretched hands an extremely long trumpet and an olive branch as a symbol of peace.

The ceiling painting in the Sala della Fama, the central hall on the second floor, is entirely allegorical. The central picture is designed as a fictive opening with only a few figures. In the centre hovers the personification of Fame in billowing robes, holding in her outstretched hands an extremely long trumpet and an olive branch as a symbol of peace. In the lower part of the picture space personifications of Honour (Honos) and Virtue (Virtus) are seated on a dark gray cloud.

The picture shows the lower part with personifications of Honour (Honos) and Virtue (Virtus). Amor Virtutis in the form of a putto turns toward them with laurel wreath and crown.

In the Stanza del Caminetto, a room adjacent to the central room on the ground floor, the centre of the ceiling shows a wreath of putti, the documented work by Antonio Circignani, called il Pomarancio (1560-1620). It is framed by four landscape pictures painted by Paul Bril, Giovanni Battista Viola, Domenichino, and Guercino. These were produced in a kind of competition between the four painters. Guercino’s contribution is seen on the right in the present photo. It was painted in tempera, a technique that allowed for swift, spontaneous execution and lush, rich colours.

This small painting on copper belongs to Guercino’s Roman period. The subject of the painting, in which Christ gazes heavenwards, and the copper support suggest that it was intended as a private devotional image.

The painting was commissioned in 1618 (significantly the date of the start of the Thirty Years War) by the famous mosaicist Marcello Provenzali da Cento, but was probably not finished by the painter until the following year. A seventeenth-century copy that is about ten centimetres wider, in a private collection in Paris in 1987, suggests that the left side of the painting, where the Parisian composition appears more developed, may have been cut off.

According to Torquato Tasso’s account in Gerusalemme Liberata (canto XIX, 104-14), Tancred, after being wounded by Argante during the siege of Jerusalem, is helped by Vafrino. On removing Tancred’s armor and discovering his wounds, he tells Erminia. Erminia tends her lover’s bloody wounds with the braided tresses of her own hair. The depiction of the subject was influenced by two famous Christian themes: The Lament over the Dead Christ and St Sebastian Tended by Pious Women.

The monumental and animated drama of the composition, which seems to burst out of the confines of the frame, the strong contrasts of light and shade, the velvety colours, the highly original style, the ivory-tinted flesh tones, and the gamut of yellows, ochers, and oily gray-greens make this undoubted masterpiece, in which he meditates on the examples set by Bassano and Fetti, one of the artist’s most outstanding works.

This is one of Guercino’s best-known paintings. It shows two young shepherds who have discovered a skull. The title could be interpreted as a sentence uttered by Death (“I too am in Arcadia”). But any moral significance to the work is lost in a moment of pure contemplation. Quotations from Correggio and Venetian art are completely in tune with the depth and sensitivity of feeling typical of Guercino.

This painting is directly connected to the Apollo and Marsyas that Guercino carried out for the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1618 (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence): both pictures include the same group of shepherds. It is assumed that the Barberini canvas could not have existed as an independent composition prior to the Florentine painting, and so must have been executed later. In this painting, Guercino transforms the rustic onlookers into protagonists in a self-sufficient moralizing theme. An effective exploration of the memento mori is attained by the addition of the skull, with its worm and fly, and the inscription Et in Arcadia ego. An early work of Guercino, the painting was executed before his Roman period (1621-23) and after his voyage to Venice, where this sort of moralizing allegory was quite popular. The canvas has been dated alternately to 1618 and 1622.

The iconography of the memento mori in a pastoral setting, derived from the Ecologues of Virgil, was well known in Venetian and Roman art from the Renaissance onwards; yet here for the first time it is explicitly explained through the addition of the inscription.

This painting is also known as The Combat of the Romans and the Sabines.

After Guido Reni’s death in 1642, Guercino left Rome and settled in Bologna, where he developed a style with bright colours and clear outlines, in which the sculptural aspect of the figures and their frieze-like arrangement recall antique bas-reliefs, as in Hersilia Separating Romulus and Tatius.

This composition presents the figures in three-quarter length behind the ledge of the well which serves as a border, and with a low-horizoned landscape behind. Guercino is known to have studied Venetian painting, and this is evident in his bold use of colour (particularly in the figure of Christ) and his painting of the landscape and sky with dense, dark clouds.

On the short sides of the Sala dell’Aurora are two lunettes which fill the space beneath the imaginary centre opening. On the left side sits a winged youth holding a torch in his raised left hand. He can be identified as the personification of Day.

On the short sides of the Sala dell’Aurora are two lunettes which fill the space beneath the imaginary centre opening. Opposite to the personification of Day sits the personification of the Fourth Watch of the Night with Two Sleeping Children. It is possible that the meditative pose of the female figure was derived from D�rer’s Melencolia.

Aloft on clouds, the Virgin, Child, and archangel, bathed in Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, are like a vision. The swallow symbolizes rebirth; the white cloth on which the child sits, his future shroud.

When Alessandro Ludovisi, formerly the cardinal archbishop of Bologna, became Pope Gregory XV (1621—25), artists who had worked for his family in his native city were called to Rome, among them Domenichino, Guido Rent, Albani, and Guercino, the latter responding to the pope’s invitation in 1621.

The Penitent Magdalen was painted for the church of Santa Maria Maddalena delle Convertite in Rome’s Via del Corso. The church was damaged by fire in January 1617 and rebuilt during the pontificate of Paul V (1605—21) under the patronage of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (who may have also commissioned the painting). The artist depicted the meeting between Mary Magdalene and the angels in front of Christ’s empty sepulcher as narrated in the Gospel of John (20:11-15). The painting is striking for its classical, almost statuesque figures, its dense tonal values, and the clever chiaroscuro play of the splendid landscape and sky. The monumental figure’s almost heroic aspect is underlined by the skillfully painted drapery and commanding pose which dominate the picture plane. Guercino emphasizes the clasped hands of the kneeling saint, whose face is contorted in sorrow as she leans against the closed tomb - empty now that Christ has risen. The Magdalen’s gaze is directed towards the large nail held by an angel at the right.

Guercino’s presence in the Eternal City, although brief in time since he had already returned to Cento by 1625, deeply affected local culture, dominated and divided as it was in those days by the endless conflict between classicism and realism. Its location in the center of the city made the painting very accessible and much admired by numerous artists, clearly influencing Pier Francesco Mola and inspiring a drawing by Van Dyck.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

C�sar Franck: Panis angelicus

One of the masterpieces of Guercino’s late period. The subject of the painting comes from the Golden Legend by Jacques de Voragine. A drawing study to the painting exists in a private collection in London.

The sitter was Francesco Righetti (1595-1673), doctor of laws who served as a member of the city council and as governor of Cento, Guercino’s own native city. Though Righetti would have been only 30 years old at the time, we know he was impressed by Guercino’s works and indeed went on to commission at least two other paintings from the artist. He is depicted in his library.

Due to the Venetian character of this portrait by the young Guercino, it was mistaken for the work of Titian.

‘Guercino’ means ‘squint-eyed’ and is the unpromising nickname under which the artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri won international fame. Coming from Cento, a small town equidistant between Ferrara and Bologna, he was virtually self-taught and like many seventeenth-century artists was able to choose his own influences. He looked to Bologna, to the work of the Carracci, and to paintings by Caravaggio in private collections, forging from these a lyrical idiom of his own.

A local nobleman having lent him rooms in his house, Guercino founded there an Academy of the Nude, where he and his followers were able to draw from the model. The figure of Christ in this painting palpably relies on just such a study from life.

This painting was commissioned by Cardinal Giacomo Serra, the papal legate to Ferrara.

This work is from Guercino’s early period, when he was beginning to achieve some initial fame and was already familiar with both the main trends of early Italian Baroque, Caravaggism and the Bolognese reform of the Annibale Carracci school. His decision to use the approach of Caravaggio may have something to do with the choice of subject matter, contrasting the humility of human existence and the possibilities of costume as disguise - a concept formulated by Caravaggio in his paintings for San Luigi and frequently taken up by his followers.

Guercino does not portray the return of the prodigal son as a scene of recognition or joy, choosing instead to depict a more tranquil motif from the biblical parable - the moment when he is given fine robes to wear. On the left in the painting, the young man has stood up and is removing the rags of the swineherd, while an old man, presumably his father, places a hand on his shoulder and takes a clean shirt from the other, foppishly dressed young man who is holding new clothes over his outstretched arm and new shoes in his hand. By using light and shade to divide the group, Guercino lends a singular autonomy to the dynamics of the outstretched and grasping hands, thereby intensifying the narrative in a most unusual way.

This painting was commissioned by Cardinal Giacomo Serra, the papal legate to Ferrara.

This painting was commissioned by Cardinal Giacomo Serra, the papal legate to Ferrara. As shown here, Guercino’s early masterpiece demonstrates far better than most other paintings that it is possible to achieve dramatically theatrical effects without abandoning real naturalism.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Samson, Part 1 Sinfonia, recitative and chorus

This painting was executed along with a pendant, now in Los Angeles, that depicts Samson showing his hair - secret of his superhuman strength - to Delilah. Guercino painted the pair of canvases in 1646 for the Cardinal Falconieri, who was at the time serving as Papal Legate to Bologna. The two paintings were separated at the end of the eighteenth century.

Guercino’s increasing tendency towards classicism began in the 1630’s when the painter fell under the influence of the late work of Guido Reni. Like its pendant, the Saul Attacking David is a splendid example of his late style, a period in which Guercino brought his investigations into classicising style to their fullest conclusion.

Despite the dramatic quality of the narrative, the composition of the painting is extremely balanced: everything centres on the monumentality of the two figures, contrasting protagonists of the scene. Almost frozen in their action, they are displayed entirely in the foreground, as if in a relief sculpture. The chromatic range, light and highly refined, is rather far from the richly impasted mode of the artist’s youth, as is the way in which the shadows ably underline the plastic quality of the two personages.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Johann Kuhnau: Saul Cured by David through Music (No. 2 of the 6 Stories from the Bible illustrated in music)

Interrupted at her toilette by news of a revolt, Semiramis, the legendary queen of Assyria, demonstrated her determination as a ruler by refusing to finish combing her hair until she had led her army to crush the rebels. In the present work, Guercino illustrates the story of Semiramis called to Arms at the precise moment at which the Queen is interrupted at her toilette by a messenger bearing the news of the revolt of the Babylonians. According to Valerius Maximus, in keeping with her imperious and war-like nature, she immediately abandoned her toilette, with her hair in disorder, and rushed to take up arms to quell the revolt.

The story of Semiramis is recounted by the Roman historian and moralist Valerius Maximus in his De Factis Dictisque Memorabilibus Libri (vol. IX, p.3, ext.4), a collection of short stories illustrating examples of good and bad conduct from the lives of important figures. Semiramis, a woman of unrivalled beauty, was the daughter of the fish-goddess Derceto, and became one of the founders of the Assyrian empire of Nineveh. Interrupted at her toilette by news of a revolt, Semiramis, the legendary queen of Assyria, demonstrated her determination as a ruler by refusing to finish combing her hair until she had led her army to crush the rebels. This depiction of the story is made lively and dramatic by the emphatic gestures and by such bold compositional devices as the off-center placement of Semiramis and the radically cropped figure of her maid at right.

The subject clearly appealed to Guercino, for he painted no fewer than three treatments of the theme, all of half-length format. The first is a this painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he executed in 1624 for Daniele Ricci. In around 1627-28 he returned to the subject, with a painting formerly in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, destroyed in 1945. The third and final treatment was commissioned in 1645 by Cardinal Cornaro, and is now in a private collection.

This sketch is for Aurora in Guercino’s ceiling painting in the Casino dell’Aurora in Rome. A series of drawings show that the artist worked intensively on the design of the composition and the individual pictorial motifs.

The painting was commissioned and paid for by Giovanni Donato Correggio in 1656. The crisp treatment of the lilies is noteworthy.

This altarpiece was commissioned by Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV. St Gregory was chosen as a subject because Ludovico wanted to pay homage to his dead uncle, who had taken the name of one of the greatest popes of the Church’s early period. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier were both canonised by Pope Gregory XV on 12 march 1622, St Gregory’s feast day.

This painting is also known as The Tears of Saint Peter.

In his last period Guercino proceeded to a marked classicism by eliminating the ‘chiaroscuro’ effects of the earlier years.

Romuald (c. 952-1027) was a Benedictine monk who entered the Order as an act of atonement after his father had murdered a relative. Finding the monastic life of his day in need of reform he founded communities that were vowed to solitude and silence, of which the best known was the monastery of Camaldoli in the Appenines near Arezzo. Romuald is old and white-bearded and is dressed in the habit of the Camaldolese Order, a striking loose-flowing white garment with wide sleeves.

This canvas originated from the church of San Gregorio in Bologna and according to contemporaries it was a “large splash” of light and colour that completely overshadowed all the other paintings around it, including Lodovico Carracci’s altarpiece. There is no doubt that this was the most important painting Guercino produced in his early years. He took great trouble preparing it and worked from careful studies and pencil sketches. The structure of the composition was highly original. The figures are arranged along the sides of an invisible lozenge, leaving the centre of the painting empty. The use of light and shade emphasized both the very delicate colours (right through to the candid white robes of the brother on the right) and the deeply dark areas. Thanks to this painting, Guercino became the favourite painter of Cardinal Ludovisi and leader of the Bologna school.

A masterpiece of the young Guercino, painted for the Bishop of Bologna together with other Biblical scenes.

In this picture, pure red and blue in the angel’s sleeve and the sky, and pure white and black paint, are intermixed and blended with an earth colour to produce a wonderful range of ashen violets and misty ochres, against which the body of Christ on his luminous shroud glows like a golden-tinged pearl. The subject is a free version of the traditional Venetian theme of two angels holding up the dead Christ beside his tomb for the viewer’s pious meditation; it does not illustrate any biblical text. The wounds of Christ are discreetly suggested. Pathos arises from the juxtaposition of beauty with grief, of close observation in the studio with poetic invention, and the borderline between them is as blurred as the melting contours between flesh and stone, feather and cloud.

Guercino executed this large canvas for Lorenzo Imperiali, the Cardinal of Ferrara, who presented it as a gift to Pope Alexander VII (Chigi 1655-1667). From Guercino’s account books we know that he was paid in installments for his work on this canvas from October 1657 to January 1658.

The painting remained in the Palazzo Chigi until 1918, when it was acquired by the state along with the palace and the entire collection of the family.

In many of its aspects this painting is typical of the late work of Guercino. It is characterized by a diffuse, atmospheric luminosity and a classically monumental composition, sustained by a refined chromatic sensibility and vibrations of colour. Likewise, the extremely free and summary brushstroke that recomposes itself to the eye from a certain distance is a hallmark of Guercino’s work.

Guercino painted this picture in c. 1644 for one of the side altars of the church of San Bartolomeo in Vicenza. Not much earlier, around 1640, a significant change occurred in the style of the painter when, after an artistic past characterized by passionate pathos, he started to accept the classicizing ideas of Guido Reni. In this altarpiece, which includes life-size figures, the hallmarks of the master’s new creative period appear in mature form.

With its vibrant textures and rich, sombre palette of lush blue, ochres and oranges, all beautifully modulated by the half light, the present painting illustrates how the influence of Titian was still strongly embedded in Guercino’s work, even after his arrival in Rome. At the same time, new sources of inspiration may be seen, for example that of Caravaggio, and his followers, as well as Guido Reni.

This painting was executed in the first years of intense activity at the beginning of his career. The large altarpiece confirms the high quality of his works in this period.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Guillaume Dufay: Aurea luce, hymn for the feast of Sts Peter and Paul

This canvas is one of a series of five life-size paintings of saints commissioned by Cardinal Fabrizio Savelli, appointed Papal Legate in Bologna, in 1649. The five pictures in the series are all vertical and of very similar dimensions, they include representations of Sts Francis, Jerome, James the Greater, and John the Baptist.

The artist depicts the Magdalene’s hair with remarkably fine strokes, highlighting the thick, waving tresses at her head and shoulders, down to the individual hairs that uncoil across her abdomen.

This one of the numerous paintings conserved in the native city of the artist. It is a significant work from the transition period of the artist after the agitated phase of his youth and before his classicism in Rome.

The painting takes up a theme made popular by Annibale Carracci and his pupils. Guercino’s distinctive use of colour creates dramatic effects of atmosphere and lighting, so that the pale body of Venus is highlighted against her dark drapery and that of her companions. Guercino’s depiction of the tumbling putti was influenced by Titian’s Worship of Venus.

The Casino dell’Aurora is the only portion spared from nineteenth-century demolition of the Villa Ludovisi (later Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi) in Rome. Originally the Casino, erected around 1570 and enlarged in the nineteenth century, was a three-story structure on a cruciform ground plan. During the pontificate of Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi the villa and its casino were used mainly for official functions such as dinners for the college of cardinals. The Casino was decorated by paintings on the ground floor and the second floor in the seventeenth century.

The ceiling of the central room on the ground floor was painted by Guercino depicting Aurora on Her Triumphal Chariot. This composition was a deliberate response to Guido Reni’s Aurora in the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in Rome. Guercino’s coworker was Agostino Tassi who was responsible for the architecture (quadratura) painted in fresco technique. (Guercino painted in tempera instead of fresco.)

In its combination of heraldic and allegorical elements, the pictorial program in the Casino dell’Aurora anticipates the pictorial idiom later perfected by Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Barberini.

Guercino was summoned to Rome by a Bolognese patron elected pope in 1621. After a heady start, he was evidently intimidated by the example of High Renaissance painting and by the work of his competitors, the Bolognese Reni and Domenichino among them, and adopted a classicising style which relied less on shadow, bold foreshortenings and study from life. With the death of the pope in 1623 he returned to Cento, where he pursued a successful career providing easel paintings to clients throughout Europe. He resisted offers from the French and English kings to work at their courts. After the death of Reni he moved to Bologna where he became the leading painter. In the best works from this late period of his life, he contrived to emulate Reni’s cool elegance without compromising his own gifts as both colourist and draughtsman.

This painting was commissioned in 1649 by Francesco I d’Este to replace Correggio’s Madonna with St George in the church San Pietro Martire in Modena. The represented saints are the patron saints of Modena, Sts Geminianus, John the Baptist, George, and Peter the Martyr.