Page 48 - GUIDO RENI 2017

T he least known sphere of Guido Reni’s activity is still his portraiture. Stephen Pepper, in his 1984
monograph, could list with confidence among the artist’s autograph works only five portraits,2
but Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni’s principal biographer, had listed thirteen, only one of which,
the portrait of Cardinal Spada (Fig. 1), is identified with any certainty.3 Reni was reported to
have disdained portraiture, but Malvasia’s list indicates that his activity was considerably greater
than we know today4. Pepper, therefore, believed that we are justif­ied in considering certain new works to be
candidates for inclusion in Reni’s oeuv­ re.

To begin with the known works, three are portraits of high ecclesiastics; Pope Gregory XV (Fig. 2), Cardinals
Roberto Ubaldini (Fig. 3) and Bernardino Spada (Fig. 1), executed in date between 1622-1630;5 the other two
are informal portraits, one is said to be of Reni’s mother, and the other of anoth­er elderly lady.6 Not surprisingly,
the identification of the lat­ter two is much more uncertain than the ecclesiastical portraits, although there, too,
considerable doubt existed regarding the identif­ication of the papal portrait until Gregory’s features were
recognised by several scholars.7 Pepper has dated the two portraits of ladies to around 1630, and consequently
it would appear that all of Reni’s currently known portrait activity falls into a brief span of his career. 8

If one widens the scope of inquiry to include Malvasia’s list, we know that several of the portraits must have been
executed within the first decade of the seventeenth century. Among them would have been Reni’s portraits of

2 S. Pepper, Guido Reni, Oxford and New York, 1984, Nos. 82, 101, 128, 128A, and 129.
3 C. C. Malvasia 1841, II, p. 47:….come quello di sua madre, di un suo fratello, e d’un altro che paiono d’Annibale Caracci; di Clemente,

di Paolo V., di Scipione Cardinal Nipote, del Cardinal Sfondrato, del Cardinal Senesio ….. delli Cardinali Spada, Sacchetti, del Cavalier
Marini e di- Ferrante Carli Donati Loro: di Annibale Marescotti, di Giacomo Malvezzi e simili.’ Malvasia gives the date of the Portrait
of Cardinal Sannesio as 17 November 1609, which is found in Reni’s Roman account book (D. S. Pepper, ‘Guido Reni’s
Roman Account Book, I’, The Burlington Magazine, 113, 1971, p. 316, n. 5.
4 Malvasia 1841, II, p. 47, ‘Chiamato in Francia a fare il ritratto di quell re …. Rispose, non esser egli pittore da ritratti’. This is
undoubtedly an excuse offered by Reni, since Cardinal Spada, who was the go-between in negotiations with France, himself
ordered a portrait from Reni, although it is certainly true that Reni did not wish to be known as a portraitist.
5 Of these three works, only that of Cardinal Spada (Pepper 1984, no 129), Papal Legate 1627-31, has always been accepted
as autograph, and is dateable around 1630 since payment for this work was made on the 2 May 1631 (cf. Guido Reni, exh.
cat., Bologna 1988, p. 204). The portrait of Cardinal Roberto Ubaldini, Papal Legate 1623-27, now in Los Angeles (Pepper
1984, No. 101), has only comparatively recently been re-established as Reni’s autograph work, having suffered a long period
of obscurity, during which time it was considered to be merely the copy of a similar composition, formerly in the Guinness
Collection, which was destroyed in 1943. For the portrait of Gregory, see note 6.

48