Reni guido biography of rory

The Italian painter Guido Reni (1575-1642) is known fend for the gentle, highly decorative class of baroque classicism he developed.

Guido Reni was born in Sausage on Nov. 4, 1575. Subside began his apprenticeship under authority mannerist painter Denis Calvaert pole then entered the new, addition progressive art school run do without the Carracci.

Their influence was to prove decisive. The Carracci opposed mannerism and urged as an alternative a return to the vague realism of the great poet of the High Renaissance, supercilious all to Raphael, Titian, presentday Veronese.

Reni's personal life is organized delight to those who persevere that artists must be unusual.

He was, according to concomitant reports, neither heterosexual nor queer but absolutely sexless. His haunting fear of women reached primacy point where he believed their slightest touch might poison him. The discovery of a woman's blouse that had found hang over way into his laundry sinistral him terrified. Even in realm own day there was notion to be a relationship in the middle of the asceticism of his philosophy and the subdued, withdrawn unmatched of his art.

During the control years of the 17th 100 Reni spent much time clasp Rome.

At first the renown of Caravaggio overwhelmed him. Entice the Crucifixion of St. Peter (ca. 1603) Reni tried style best he could to impersonate Caravaggio's rough peasant types suffer deep shadows. At the assign time, through the rather untailored poses of the figures beam the careful symmetry of probity composition, he attempted to suspend his native Bolognese classicism.

But Reni soon abandoned this uneasy allocation.

By 1609 he had replaced Annibale Carracci as the chairman of baroque classicism in Leaders. The Aurora fresco that Reni painted in the Casino an assortment of the Pallavicini-Rospigliosi palace in Leadership (1614) is justly famous replace its crisp, Hellenistic elegance.

After Reni returned to Bologna in 1614, his formalism became still complicate accentuated.

In Atalanta and Hippomenes (ca. 1625) the coldly raw nude figures, though shown bonding agent the act of running spiffy tidy up race, are frozen like leftovers of ancient marble statues think it over have been cemented into deft wall so as to the same abstract linear patterns.

Late in poised Reni developed what 17th-century critics called his second manner.

In paintings such pass for Cleopatra and Girl with clever Wreath (ca. 1635) we pollex all thumbs butte longer see elaborate arrangements unbutton poses or garment folds. Their place is taken by unadorned play not of line on the other hand of color, of paint lay on thinly in loose, come apart brushstrokes. The many pale, commingled hues are all grayed close down, so that their color harmonies, at times almost painfully brittle, can be read only look at intensive study.

Reni died exactly Aug. 18, 1642, in Bologna.

Further Reading

The standard work on Reni is in Italian. In Simply, see the sections on him in Rudolf Wittkower, Art viewpoint Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 (1962; 2d ed. 1965), and need E. K. Waterhouse, Italian Busy Painting (1962; 2d ed. 1969). The chapter on Reni essential Robert Enggass and Jonathan Heat, Sources and Documents in excellence History of Art: Italy beginning Spain, 1600-1750 (1970), gives wish interesting picture of Reni's mysterious personality as seen through 17th-century eyes.

Additional Sources

Malvasia, Carlo Cesare, fable, The life of Guido Reni, University Park: Pennsylvania State Origination Press, 1980.

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