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The Bologna|Bolognese painter Guido Reni (November
4, 1575 - August 18, 1642) epitomizes much of the
best, but also some of the more embarrassing,
features of Baroque painting. He was one of the
most admired artists of his day, and his
theatrical and accessible paintings are the
stock-in-trade of sentimental Roman Catholic
wallet-cards today. 

Guido was born at Calvenzano near Bologna into a
family of musicians, but he was an irrepressible
prodigy whom Denis Calvaert took into his academy
of design by the father's permission, when the
child was nine. Guido's talent matured swiftly.
Francesco Albani|Albani and Domenichino soon
became pupils in the same academy. Guido and
Albani's intimacy turned to rivalry as they
matured. Domenichino also was pitted against Reni
at the instigation of Annibale Caracci. Guido was
still studying with Calvart when he began
frequenting the rival school in Bologna run by
Lodovico Caracci, whose style, far in advance of
that of the Flemish painter, he dallied with. This
exasperated Calvart, whom Guido, not yet twenty
years of age, cheerfully left, transferring
himself openly to the Caracci academy, in which he
soon became prominent, being as skilful as he was
ambitious.

He had not been a year with the Caracci when a
work of his excited the wonder of Agostino and the
jealousy of Annibale. Lodovico cherished him, and
frequently painted him as an angel, for the
youthful Reni was extremely handsome. After a
while, however, Lodovico also felt himself
nettled, and he patronized the competing talents
of Giovanni Barbiere. On one occasion Guido had
made a copy of Annibale's Descent from the Cross;
Annibale was asked to retouch it, and, finding
nothing to do, exclaimed pettishly, "He knows more
than enough" ("Costui ne sa troppo"). On another
occasion. Lodovico, consulted as umpire, lowered a
price which Reni asked for an early picture. This
slight determined the young man to be a pupil no
more. He left the Caracci, and started on his own
account as a competitor in the race for patronage
and fame. When he left, he had already completed a
renowned work, Callisto and Diana.

Guido was faithful to the eclectic principle of
the Bolognese school of painting. He had
appropriated something from Calvart, much more
from Lodovico Caracci; he studied with much zest
after Albrecht Dürer; he adopted the massive,
sombre and partly uncouth manner of Michelangelo
Merisi|Caravaggio. One day Annibale Caracci made
the remark that a style might be formed reversing
that of Caravaggio in such matters as the
ponderous shadows and the gross common forms; this
observation germinated in Guido's mind, and he
endeavoured after some such style, aiming
constantly at suavity. Towards 1602 he went to
Rome with Albani. and Rome remained his
headquarters for twenty years.

Here, in the pontificate of the Borghese Pope Paul
V, he was greatly noted and distinguished. 

In the garden-house of the Rospigliosi Palace he
painted the vast fresco which is justly regarded
as his masterpiece Phoebus and the Hours preceded
by Aurora. This exhibits his second manner, in
which he had deviated far indeed from the
promptings of Caravaggio. He founded now chiefly
upon the antique, more especially the Niobe group
and the Venus de Medici, modified by suggestions
from Raffaello Santi|Raphael, Antonio da
Correggio|Correggio, Parmigianino and Paolo
Veronese. Of this last painter, although on the
whole he did not get much from him, Guido was a
particular admirer; he used to say that he would
rather have been Veronese than any other master.
The "Aurora" is beyond doubt a work of pre-eminent
beauty and attainment; it is stamped with
pleasurable dignity, and, without being
effeminate, has a more uniform aim after graceful
selectness than can readily be traced in previous
painters, greatly superior though some of them had
been in impulse and personal fervour of genius.

The pontifical chapel of Montecavallo was assigned
to Reni to paint; but, being straitened in
payments by the ministers, the artist made off to
Bologna. He was fetched back by Paul V with
ceremonious éclat, and lodging, living and
equipage were supplied to him. At another time he
migrated from Rome to Naples, having received a
commission to paint the chapel of S. Gennaro. The
notorious cabal of three painters resident in
Naples Belisario Corenzio|Corenzio, Giovanni
Battista Caracciolo|Caracciolo and Giuseppe
Ribera|Ribera-offered, however, as stiff an
opposition to Guido as to some other interlopers
who preceded and succeeded him. They gave his
servant a beating by the hands of two unknown
bullies, and sent by him a message to his master
to depart or prepare for death; Guido waited for
no second warning, and departed. He now returned
to Rome; but he finally left that city abruptly,
in the pontificate of Pope Urban VIII|Urban VIII,
in consequence of an offensive reprimand
administered to him by Cristoval Rojas de
Spinola|Cardinal Spinola. He had received an
advance of 400 scudi on account of an altarpiece
for St Peters, but after some lapse of years had
made no beginning with the work. A broad reminder
from the cardinal put Reni on his mettle; he
returned the 400 scudi, quitted Rome within a few
days, and steadily resisted all attempts at
recall. He now resettled in Bologna. He had taught
as well as painted in Rome, and he left pupils
behind him; but on the whole he did not stamp any
great mark upon the Roman school of painting,
apart from his own numerous works in the papal
city.

In Bologna Guido lived in great splendour, and
established a celebrated school, numbering more
than two hundred scholars. He himself drew in it,
even down to his latest years. On first returning
to this city, he charged about 21 for a
full-length figure (mere portraits are not here in
question), half this sum for a half-length, and 5
for a head. These prices must be regarded as
handsome, when we consider that Domenichino about
the same time received only 10, for his very large
and celebrated picture, the Last Communion of St
Jerome. But Guido's reputation was still on the
increase, and in process of time he quintupled his
prices. He now left Bologna hardly at all; in one
instance, however, be went off to Ravenna, and,
along with three pupils, he painted the chapel in.
the cathedral with his admired picture of the
"Israelites gathering Manna."

His shining prosperity was not to last till the
end. Guido was dissipated, generously but
indiscriminately profuse, and an inveterate
gambler. Obsessive gambling grew upon him, and in
a couple of evenings he lost the enormous sum of
14,400 scudi. The vice told still more ruinously
on his art than on his character. It his decline
he sold his time at so much per hour to certain
picture dealers; one of them would stand by, watch
in hand, to oversee his work. Haif-heartedness,
half-per formance, blighted his product:
self-repetition and mere mannerism, with
affectation for sentiment and vapidity for beauty,
became the art of Guido. Some of these trade-works
heads or half-figures, were turned out in three
hours or even less. It is said that, tardily wise,
Reni left off gambling for nearly two years; at
last he relapsed, and his relapse was followed not
long afterwards by his death of fever. He died in
debt, but was buried with great pomp in the church
of S. Domenico.

Guido was personally modest, although he valued
himself on his position in the art, and would
tolerate no slight in that relation; he was
extremely upright, temperate in diet, careful in
his person and his dress. He was fond of stately
houses, but could feel also the charm of solitude.
In his temper there was a large amount of
suspiciousness; and the jealousy which his
abilities and his successes excited, now from the
Caracci, now from Francesco Albani|Albani, now
from the monopolizing league of Neapolitan
painters, may naturally have kept this feeling in
active exercise. Of his numerous pupils, Simone
Cantarini, named "Il Pesarese," counts as the most
distinguished; he painted an admirable head of
Reni, now in the Bolognese Gallery. The portrait
in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence is from Reni's
own hand. Two other good pupils were Giacomo
Semenza and Francesco Gessi.

The character of Guidos art is so well known as
hardly to call for detailed analysis, beyond what
we have already intimated. His most characteristic
style exhibits a prepense ideal, of form rather
than character, with a slight mode of handling,
and silvery, somewhat cold, color. In working from
the nude he aimed at perfection of form,
especially marked in the hands and feet. But he
was far from always going to choice nature for his
model; he transmuted ad libitum, and painted, it
is averred, a Magdalene of demonstrative charms
from a vulgar-looking color-grinder. His best
works have beauty, great amenity, artistic feeling
and high accomplishment of manner, all alloyed
with a certain core of commonplace; in the worst
pictures the commonplace swamps everything, and
Guido has flooded European galleries with trashy
and empty pretentiousness, all the more noxious in
that its apparent grace of sentiment and form
misleads the unwary into approval, and the
dilettante dabbler into cheap raptures. Both in
Rome and wherever else he worked he introduced
increased softness of style, which was then
designated as the modern method. His pictures are
mostly Scriptural or mythological in subject, and
between two and three hundred of them are to be
found in various European collections, more than a
hundred of these containing life-sized figures.
The portraits which he executed are few —
those of Pope Sixtus V|Sixtus V, Cardinal Spada
and the so‑called Beatrice Cenci being among
the most noticeable. The identity of the
last-named portrait is very doubtful; it certainly
cannot have been painted direct from Beatrice, who
had been executed in Rome before Guido ever lived
there. Many etchings are attributed to him, some
from his own works, and some after other masters;
they are spirited, but rather negligent.

Of other works not already noted, the following
should be named:
*in Rome (the Vatican), the "Crucifixion of St
Peter," an example of the painter's earlier manner
*also in Rome, in the church of S. Lorenzo in
Lucina, "Christ Crucified"
*in Forli, the "Conception"
*in Bologna, the "Alms of St Roch" (early), the
"Massacre of the Innocents," and the "Pietà," or
"Lament over the Body of Christ" (in the church of
the Mendicanti), which is by many regarded as
Guido's prime executive work
*in the Dresden Gallery, an "Ecce Homo"
*in Milan (Brera Gallery), "Saints Peter and Paul"
*in Genoa (church of S. Ambrogio), the "Assumption
of the Virgin"
*in Berlin, "St Paul the Hermit and St Anthony in
the Wilderness"
The celebrated picture of "Fortune" (in the
Capitol) is one of Reni's finest treatments of
female form; as a specimen of male form, the
"Samson Drinking from the Jawbone of an Ass" might
be named beside it.

One of his last works of mark is the "Ariadne,"
once in the Capitoline Museums. The Louvre
contains twenty of his pictures, the National
Gallery of London seven, and others once there
have now been removed to other public collections.
The most interesting of the seven is the small
"Coronation of the Virgin," painted on copper, an
elegantly finished work, pretty rather than
beautiful. It was probably painted before the
master left Bologna for Rome.  

1911