Guido Reni

1575 - 1642 • Italian • Painter • Baroque

"I should have liked to have an angelic brush and heavenly forms for delineating the Archangel, and to see him in Paradise. But I was unable to ascend so high, alld I sought him on earth in vain. So, I had to look to the idea of beauty conceived in my mind." - Guido Reni

Reni studied in the academy founded by the CARRACCFI AMILYin Bologna. He went on to Rome and was, briefly, among the CARAVAGGISTI. but he was accused, by the artist himself, of "stealing" CARAVAGGIO'S style, and Reni changed to a more ethereal arc, which he alludes to in the quotation above. His contemporaries then praised his refinement and likened his style to that of an angel, as he would have hoped. This heaven-inspired touch was at its most eloquent in his ceiling FRESCO Aurora (1614), in the Casino Rospigliosi, Rome. This framed, or QUADRO RIPORTATO, picture shows the airborne goddess, Dawn, spreading flowers on the earth and leading the way for Apollo. His chariot is drawn by dappled horses and is surrounded by dancing maidens, who represent the hours. Concern with time was central to the spirit of the BAROQUE age. As PANOFSKY wrote, "No period has been so obsessed with the depth and width, the horror and the sublimity of the concept of time as the Baroque, the period in which man found himself confronted with the infinite as a quality of the universe instead of as a prerogative of God." According to his biographer, MALVASIAR, eni was asexual, and phobic about women. Other than his mother, with whom he lived, Reni would not allow them in his house, fearing both witchcraft and poisoning. Yet he was devoted to the Virgin Mary. He made his own selfportrait as a beautiful woman in a turban in one scene in the cycle of the Life of Saint Benedict. His paintings may have been considered celestial during his lifetime, but Reni's star fell so far that at the start of the 20th century BERENSON would say, "We turn from Guido Reni with disgust unspeakable." If Reni seemed insipid and hypocritical then, today his style and grace and his points of reference are again interesting.