Page 20 - GUIDO RENI 2017

GUIDO RENI

(1575 – Bologna – 1642)

G uido, together with Francesco Albani and Domenichino, was a pupil of the Flemish painter Denys
Calvaert. Early in 1594 he joined the Carracci’s Accademia degli Incamminati. His first important
commissions were for altarpieces in the churches of Bologna which date from between 1595 and 1598.
That year he won the competition for a painted memorial to celebrate Clement VIII’s visit to Bologna,
an achievement which brought him to the attention of the Aldobrandini family. In December 1599 he was elected
to the Consiglio della Congregazione dei Pittori and thereafter his career was to be divided between Bologna and Rome
which he visited in 1601. There he was to some extent influenced by the naturalism of Caravaggio, who, it is
said, threatened to kill him if he did not stop stealing his style. He had probably returned to Bologna by January
1603, when a memorial service was held there for Agostino Carracci and Reni engraved the funerary decorations.

Between 1608 and 1612 Reni was in the service both of pope Paul V Borghese (see the portrait catalogued on
pages 46) and of Scipione Borghese, frequently working on commissions in the company of artists who were
also Emilian. In 1608, Paul V (formerly Cardinal Camillo Borghese), commissioned a series of frescoes from
him. These frescoes depicted three scenes from the life of Samson for the decoration of the Sala delle Nozze
Aldobrandini, as well as three scenes of the Mystery of the Faith for the Sala delle Dame, all in the Vatican Pa-
lace. Reni’s activity in the papal circle was also supported by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, who took the painter
into his service and from early 1608 until the end of 1612 pad for Reni’s lodgings. Concurrently he painted for
the Cardinal the large fresco in the chapel of Sant’Andrea, adjacent to San Gregorio Magno. In 1610 Reni was
working for Paul V in the Cappella dell’ Annunziata in the Palazzo del Quirinale where Francesco Albani and
Giovanni Lanfranco were among his assistants. In 1611-12 he executed frescoes in the Cappella Paolina in Santa
Maria Maggiore. His own style, best seen in the Aurora of 1613-14 (now in Rome in the Casino Rospigliosi),
depends much more on the Raphaelesque classicism of the Carracci academy. Once again back in Bologna by
1615, he finished the frescoes he had begun earlier in San Domenico. By 1617 he had completed an altarpiece
of The Assumption of the Virgin for Genoa, a work that was much acclaimed before it left Bologna.

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