Reni, Guido
Reni, Guido
Painter. Born in 4 November 1575 at Calvenzano, Italy; died in Bologna, Italy on 18 August 1642. He studied With the Carracci, and was constantly employed in decorating churches. and palaces in Rome. Good draughtsmanship and admirable coloring made him one of the most popular artists of his day. His masterpiece is the Aurora painted on the ceiling of the Rospigliosi palace in Rome. The so-called Beatrice Cenci of the Barberini palace, formerly attributed to him, is now thought to be the work of another.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Reni, Guido
Italian painter, b. at Calvenzano near Bologna, 4 Nov., 1575; d. at Bologna, 18 Aug. 1642. At one time a memoir of Guido would have exalted him to the very highest position, especially if it had been written in England, for his works were very much in demand among art connoisseurs. His pictures fetched vast sums, and were held in the highest esteem by the collectors who knew nothing of and cared less for the works of the earlier Italian painters such as Gentile da Fabriano and Fra Angelico. Now for the time the works of this great craftsman are under a cloud, and his extraordinary powers of composition and conception, and his skill of draughtsmanship, are in danger of being overlooked by reason of an entire change of fashion. In his early days he was a colourist of great purity, a composer with dramatic force, regarded as one of the greatest masters of his time, and surrounded by pupils; but later on, his very success proved his undoing, and the pictures of his maturity and old age, though marked by facility and skill, evidence a certain monotonous melodrama and a thinness of impasto which has not tended to their permanency.
He was educated first by Calvaert, later on with the Carracci, and for a while with Ferrantini. He worked with Annibale Carracci in Rome, assisted in the decoration of the Farnese Palace, the Quirinal Palace, several of the churches of Rome, and a chapel for the Borghese family, but his greatest painting in that city is undoubtedly the ceiling decoration of the Palazzo Rospigliosi — Phoebus and the Hours preceded by Aurora. He painted also in Bologna, and commenced what probably would have been his masterpiece in Naples. His works can be studied in Dresden, St. Petersburg, Genoa, Vienna, and especially in England, as many of the famous houses of that country, such as Stafford House, Bridgwater House, Lowther Castle, Blair Castle, Kingston Lacy, Burghley House, Alton Towers, Charlton Park, Cobham Park, Narford Hall, and Windsor Castle, contain important works by him, while in Italy we find his paintings in Lucca, Milan, Modena, Padua, Pisa, Perugia, Ravenna, Siena, Turin, Venice, and elsewhere. He was a man of great energy, but unfortunately of considerable self-conceit, and of prodigious activity. He was a skilful engraver and etcher; he worked in silver point and in pastel, painted ceilings and walls in fresco, and numberless panel pictures. In his own time he was perhaps the most popular artist in Italy, and in the eighteenth century occupied a similar position in England. Presently his work will be more appreciated for its own sake than it has been, his faults will be more clearly noticed, and his excellencies have a greater value. Our principal source of information respecting him is a MS. by Oretti in the library in Bologna, from which all authors have taken materials, but it has never itself been printed. There are at present two books in hand on this painter, but neither of them are sufficiently complete to be worth quoting.
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GEORGE CHARLES WILLIAMSON Transcribed by Thomas M. Barrett Dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIICopyright © 1911 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, June 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Reni, Guido
an eminent Italian painter, was born at Bologna in 1575, and first studied, under Denys Calvert; afterwards entered the school of the Caracci, and was a brilliant pupil. He soon acquired distinction, and early executed some fine works, particularly his picture of St. Benedict in the Desert, for the cloister of San Michele, in Bosco. He afterwards went to Rome, and executed the Martyrdomo of St. Cecilia, for the church of that saint, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter also. He now rose rapidly in public estimation. His most celebrated works in the palaces at. Rome are his Magdalen, in the Barberini collection, and his fresco of Aurora. The paintings of Guido are numerous, and are to be found in all the principal collections in Italy and throughout Europe. He ruined himself by gambling, and died at Bologna, August 18, 1642. To form a fair estimate of his powers, we are to judge by his best pictures, such as The Magdalen, at Rome; The Miracle of the. Manna, at Ravenna; The Conception, at Forli; The Murder of the Innocents, and The Repentance of St. Peter, at Bologna; The Purification, at Modena; and The Assumption, at Genoa, with many other works at Rome, Bologna, and elsewhere. See Spooner, Biog. Hist. of the Fine Arts, s.v.