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 :. | Jacob, Ephraim, and Manasseh, painting by Guercino | St.Peter Revives Tbitha | Persian Sibyl | Ermina Finds the Wounded Tancred jg | Doubting Thomas |
Related Artists:
Alessandro Filipepe called botticelli
Florence ca 1445-1510
Josefa of Ayala
1630-1684,Portuguese painter and engraver. She was the daughter of the Portuguese painter Baltazar Gomes Figueira (1597-1674) and a Spanish lady, Doea Catarina de Ayala y Cabrera. After the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy in 1640 the family moved to Coimbra. Here Josefa began her apprenticeship under her father, a painter of landscapes, still-lifes and religious works, who in 1644 painted the retable of Nossa Senhora da Graea, Coimbra, in the naturalist-tenebrist style he had learnt in Seville in the circles of Juan del Castillo,
Ernest Laurent
(June 8, 1859 -- June 25, 1929) was a French painter and printmaker. He was born in Gentilly and died in Bievre. Laurent was a neo-impressionist artist whose main influences were his instructor Ernest Hebert and his friend Georges Seurat. Laurent took second prize in the Prix de Rome in 1889 and in 1890, Laurent arrived in Rome, where Hebert remained Director of the Academie de France. From Rome, he went to Assisi where he underwent a mystical experience. It would profoundly influence his art. The work he returned to Paris from Assisi was noted for its religious themes. Over time, profound religious devotion influenced his artistic motif and religious symbolism and scenery crept into his work. This aspect of his life ran counter to Seurat's materialism and the two parted ways.