Page 21 - GUIDO RENI 2017

Reni’s contact with the Gonzaga court in Mantua between 1617 and 1621 resulted in a commission for a series
of Hercules subjects for the duke. Then, in 1621, he travelled to Naples in order to paint in the Capella del
Tesoro adjacent to the cathedral there, but he left abruptly for Rome on account of the hostility he encountered
from the local artists. He was in Rome, yet again, in 1627 and probably also in 1632. The remainder of his
life was spent in Bologna, fully occupied with commissions. Reni’s work was renowned during his lifetime,
but it was subjected to adverse criticism in the nineteenth century (especially as a result of Ruskin’s attacks)1.
Reni’s own concept of art and that of the artist’s position in society was lofty. During his maturity he ran an
extensive studio business in the Via delle Pescherie, Bologna which was worthy of some of our more renowned
contemporary artists today. As a result of almost a decade working in Rome his reputation was such that he no
longer needed to work as a salaried painter but could set his own terms. His coterie included servants and agents
and an extensive number of garzoni and aspiring artists. ‘First, he dictated to his assistants - Giovanni Lanfranco,
Antonio Carracci, Tomaso Campana, and Francesco Albani - exactly what they were allowed to paint.
Then, when the project was completed, Reni painted over his assistants’ work to give the entire chapel his
signature look’.2
Effectively Reni turned himself into a prestigious ‘brand’ desired by all and just as certain globalised ‘marques’
command premium prices, Reni’s art set premium valuations. In his devotion to ‘ideal’ beauty and his poetic
reworking of many classical subjects there is, perhaps, a trace of nostalgia for the Renaissance.

1. Ruskin disparaged the entire Emilian School, yet he did not stop there. He vilified late Raphael and even Correggio and found
such masters effete and lacking vigour, longing for the Trecento and Quattrocento. He detested Reni in particular considering
several of his subjects replete with sexual innuendo…the Italian religious schools ‘gave themselves to the following of pleasure
only and, as a religious school, after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from Guido [Reni], and brown gleams of gypsy
Madonnahood from Murillo, came utterly to an end.’ Ruskin, Works, 7.302.

2. Richard Spear, The ‘Divine’ Guido: Religion, Sex, Money and Art in the World of Guido Reni, Yale University Press, New Haven
and London, 1997, p. 253.

21