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 :. | assumption of the Virgin | An allegory | St Augustine sdg | Portrait of Paul Gregory XV | Apparition of Christ to the Virgin |
Related Artists:
Palmezzano, Marco
Italian, Approx. 1459-1539 .Italian painter. His earliest work was probably on the fresco decoration (c. 1480-84) of the vault of the sacristy of the treasury in the Santa Casa, Loreto, designed by Melozzo da Forl?. He then probably went to Rome, where he may have painted the fresco in the apse of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Longhi). In 1493 Palmezzano is documented working with Melozzo on the fresco decoration in the Feo Chapel,
Jean Mannheim
1863-1945
James Carroll Beckwith
(September 23, 1852 - October 24, 1917) was an American landscape, portrait and genre painter whose Impressionist style led to his recognition in the late nineteenth century as a prominent figure in American art. Carroll Beckwith, as he preferred to be known, was born in Hannibal, Missouri on 23 September 1852, the son of N. M. Beckwith, who was United States Commissioner-General at the Paris Exposition of 1867. However, he grew up in Chicago where his father started a wholesale grocery business. In 1868 aged 16 he studied art at the Chicago Academy of Design under Walter Shirlaw until the great fire of 1871 destroyed eveything (including much of the heart of the city). He then went to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design (of which he afterwards became a member) in New York City under Lemuel Wilmarth and later traveled on to Paris, staying there from November 1873 until 1878.