Guido Reni

Guido was first apprenticed to Denys Calvaert (c. 1540–1619), a Flemish painter based in Bologna, who favoured an elegant version of late Mannerism with northern European overtones. A harsh master, Calvaert was quick to exploit his student’s talents. Under his tutelage, Reni became an accomplished draughtsman, and developed a striking, sensual approach to colour; he also acquired the business acumen of his master, who had built up a flourishing trade in small oil paintings on copper. In 1594, dissatisfied with his situation, Guido decided to further his studies under Ludovico, Annibale, and Agostino Carracci, who around 1582 had founded a studio – the Accademia degli Incamminati – offering practical and theoretical training for young artists. There, Reni attended classes in life drawing and learned printmaking and terracotta modelling techniques; he also started to produce his own paintings, not just as part of Ludovico’s team but sometimes working independently for private clients and the clergy, or on official commissions for the local authorities in Bologna.

After the Jubilee year of 1600, perhaps driven by arguments with his master Ludovico Carracci, Guido made his first trip to Rome, then the undisputed art capital of Europe. The city was to have a crucial impact on his subsequent career, for it was there that he discovered the outstanding legacy of classical antiquity; there, too, he was able to examine at first hand the work of Raphael, an artist he greatly admired. But the most remarkable feature of his sojourn in Rome was his insistence on emulating the art of Caravaggio, the most radical, ground-breaking artist then active in the city. On seeing Caravaggio’s work, Guido promptly modified his own approach, with the avowed intention of outdoing Caravaggio by imitating his very particular style, an attitude which turned him for a time into a kind of ‘anti-Caravaggio’. Reni’s interest was shared by a contemporary Spanish painter who would also go on to become a leading figure on the 17th-century art scene: Jusepe de Ribera. But this experimental phase proved transitory, just one more step in the shaping of his own identity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his superb altarpiece depicting the Massacre of the Innocents.

Reni’s talent for bringing the viewer closer to divinity was unanimously acknowledged even in his lifetime. His biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, likened him to a ‘generous eagle’ taking ‘sublime flight to the spheres’, and afterwards bringing ‘celestial ideas’ back to earth. For the writer Francesco Scannelli, Guido’s painting ‘transcended the human’ to approach the divine. Malvasia described his holy figures as ‘divinity humanised’, noting the power of certain paintings to involve the viewer in transcendent scenes. This is what made Reni such a remarkable interpreter of the life and Passion of Christ, by presenting him as a man of great physical beauty capable of harbouring a divine soul. At the same time, certain gospel themes, such as those featuring the young John the Baptist, allowed him to explore a crucial stage in human development, the physical transition from adolescence to adulthood.

In Baroque society, saints were assigned a crucial role in protecting the Catholic faithful and interceding on their behalf. Echoing this religious sentiment, Reni became remarkably adept at producing beautiful, moving depictions of saints, and of scenes from their lives, both as single figures and as part of more elaborate compositions. Nowhere is his skill in constructing hagiographical narratives better displayed than in his magnificent Triumph of Job, where the wealth of secondary elements serves to highlight the saint rather than undermining his importance. But it was in his representations of single holy figures – apostles, evangelists, ascetics – that Reni fully projected his own sensibility, tackling a concept at which he excelled: the lasting beauty of the body beyond youth. The exquisite care and painterly intensity lavished on these ageing faces, these sagging bodies, endows them with a singular charm. Guido’s approach – shared by other leading contemporary artists – reflects the Christian idea that the beauty of the soul outlasts the flesh.

In the late 1620s, Reni received two important commissions for the Spanish court. The first was an Abduction of Helen, intended for the main hall at the Alcázar in Madrid, then known as the ‘Salón Nuevo’ or New Hall. Owing to a series of disagreements, the painting – which achieved considerable renown at the time – never reached Spain.

The second was an Immaculate Conception commissioned for the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain, the sister of Philip IV, which was subsequently donated to Seville cathedral, where it remained until the Napoleonic invasion, providing a source of inspiration for Murillo. In producing this painting, Guido was obliged to tackle the controversial issue of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, a doctrine fiercely defended by the Spanish monarchy but rejected by the Dominican order. The artist interprets this theme with the sensitivity that marks all his depictions of Mary, reflecting his own lifelong, fervent devotion to the Virgin. Reni’s brushwork brings Mary closer to the viewer, as the most beautiful human idealisation of a divine being.

Guido shared with most Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists an interest in representing children’s bodies, and striking examples are to be found in his work. Some paintings focus on playful putti or cherubs, while others feature Cupid, the pagan god and symbol of love. His models reflect a preference for what his biographer, Malvasia, described as ‘tender and chubby’ bodies. His portrayal of these infants was closely linked to representations by contemporary sculptors, including Alessandro Algardi – whose models were very similar to Reni’s – and Giovanni Battista Morelli, a 17th-century Madrid-based Italian sculptor working mainly in stucco and terracotta.

Reni’s iconography of love also assumed female form, for example in Girl with a Rose, which hung in Philip IV’s summer study at the Alcázar in Madrid, beside a rather sensual Venetian lady by Tintoretto, in a unique pairing of contrasting yet complementary views of love.

Reni’s paintings of goddesses, saints, and heroines of antiquity were immensely successful in the Europe of his day. Most were depicted at half- or three-quarter length, in the style of Caravaggio, thus encouraging a very direct approach by the viewer. These portrayals of women from the past, handled with consummate technical mastery and exceptional sensitivity, were not meant to convey a direct sensory experience. Guido developed his own fascinating idiom through the play of drapery, which envelops and largely conceals the figure – thus defying Mannerist precepts – and contrasts with the smooth white skin. The intense facial expressions are based on the heads of classical statues that he studied in Rome, while the rich fabrics probably allude to Bologna as a major silk-producing centre. All in all, an enigmatic sensuality – cold yet captivating – emanates from these paintings, repeated by Reni himself with slight variations, on numerous occasions, to meet the high market demand.

In his latter years, Guido’s art underwent a change so radical that even his most fervent admirers found it difficult to understand. In a burning quest for the essential in painting, his forms disintegrated, his drawing almost disappearing and his outlines becoming blurred. At the same time, his bright and varied palette was drastically pared back and muted until it closely resembled grisaille. This process of simplification largely reflected his deliberate decision to leave many paintings unfinished, perhaps for lack of time or energy, or possibly with the intention of keeping them in that state in his studio, until he found a potential buyer for whom he could complete them. This gave rise to Reni’s non finito period, in which the weariness of old age, coupled with financial difficulties caused by his compulsive gambling, drove him to rush his work in order to pay off debts. But these paintings, while prompted by Guido’s need for cash, also reflected a self-indulgent search for the beauty of the unfinished, conveying a sense of the spiritualisation of art, which was precisely what the artist sought. When Reni died in Bologna on 18 August 1642, his fellow citizens bade him a sincere and emotional farewell.