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 :. | St Augustine | A Donor Presented to the Virgin lkhi | St Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin | Angels Weeping Over the Dead Christ | Samson Captured by the Philistines |
Related Artists:
Frederick Stuart Church
Painter , Illustrator and Artist . American , 1842-1924 was an American artist, working mainly as an illustrator and especially known for his (often allegorical) depiction of animals. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His father was an important figure in politics as well as a well-known lawyer. At the age of 13 he left school and took a job at the then newly-established American Express Company in Chicago, with his parents intending him to have a business career. Being nineteen at the outbreak of the Civil War he served in the Union Army. After his discharge he returned to Chicago, having decided to devote his life to art, and started studying drawing under Walter Shirlaw at the city's Academy of Design. In 1870 he took the decision to continue his studies in New York City, which became his home for the rest of his life. He enrolled at the National Academy of Design, where he was taught by Lemuel Wilmarth. He joined the Art Students League, headed by his old teacher Walter Shirlaw, in which he remained involved for the rest of his life. Unlike many other Americans of his time who felt themselves to be living in a cultural backwater, Church - while he did think that an artist needed to be formally taught - saw no need to study art in Europe and in fact only crossed the Atlantic late in his life. He often expressed outspoken pride in original American art and declaring that "foreign art" had "little to teach Americans". This might be a reflection of the attitudes taken by the strong nativist movements active during his young age, among other places in Chicago when he lived there.
Karl Julius von Leypold
German, 1805-1874
Byzantine Painter
the period of 1465-1535