Page 56 - GUIDO RENI 2017

Finally, there is a specific pictorial effect that helps to establish the precise date of the painting. It has been
observed by Nicholas Turner that there were connect­ ions with the Carracci, and others have orally remarked in
a similar vein.19 For example, the hands display the soft modeling that one finds in Ludovico Carracci’s portraits.
One might even describe these effects as ‘Correggesque’ in the generic sense, though the delicate blondness of
the flesh tones would be considered quite typical of a later period of Reni’s painting (Fig. 5). There is a very
good reason for this, because in the summer of 1604 Reni returned to Bologna to paint the mural of Saint Benedict
receiving the Gifts of the Peasants in the octagonal cloister of San Michele in Bosco.20 While there, he was in close
touch with Ludovico and his followers. On the one hand, it is clear that Reni had a strong impact on them, but
it is also the case that in turn Ludovico influenced him. Evidence of this can be found in the Christ at the Column,
painted in Rome in the autumn of 1604.21

19 Turner 1985. Subsequently, after the portrait of Camillo Borghese had been cleaned (originally wrongly supposed to represent
Scipione), Mr. Turner accepted the attribution to Reni without reservation.

20 Pepper 1984, no. 15, St. Benedict Receiving the Gifts of the Peasants, engraved after Reni’s lost fresco in San Michele in Bosco, and
pp. 22-23, no. 23. The Reni mural at S. Michele was in oil, not fresco; Spear, 1997 loc. cit. p.32 gives the recipe as oil, egg
white and powdered brick.

21 For the Christ at the Column, Pepper 1984, no. 16. But also see Spear, loc. cit. 1997, p.385, ‘Pepper... also includes among
Reni’s Caravaggesque works Christ at the Column, Frankfurt, which I do not believe is by Reni (Spear, 1989, p.372, under no.
75 (64)). Catherine Johnston (Ms. communication 2016) is inclined to agree with Spear.

56