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 :. | Recreation by our Gallery | Et in Arcadia Ego kh | Allegory of Painting and Sculpture sdg | Concert Champetre | Saul Attacking David |
Related Artists:
John Durand
American. active1766-1782 A signed portrait (priv. col.) dated 1765 provides the first documentary information on him. He advertised in the New York Journal on 26 November 1767 that he had opened a drawing school, and again on 7 April 1768, announcing his availability as a history painter, though no examples of this activity survive. Like other painters in the colonies, he made his living from portrait painting. His most noted work, the Rapalije Children (1768; New York, NY Hist. Soc.), demonstrates the strong decorative sense, the delicate use of colour and the attempts at sophisticated value and texture application that characterize all his paintings. His skill as a draughtsman is evident in the carefully described details. Here, as in other works, he used a dark outline to define one plane from another, and he imparted a sense of elegance, particularly in the slightly turned heads and animated arms and hands.
De Winter Pharaon
French realist painter , 1849-Little 1924
BALDOVINETTI, Alessio
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, 1425-1499