Page 57 - GUIDO RENI 2017

T he very fact that one of the three Carracci had originally originally in 1985 been suggested as an
alternative attribution, (albeit which Carracci was not specified), testifies to the very high quality of
Reni’s portrait. Yet if one examines the possible Carracci alternatives, it quickly becomes clear that
none of them could really be the author of this painting. Annibale was in Rome during the entirety of Camillo’s
tenure as cardinal and there is no evi­dence that he ever painted a portrait of a high ecclesiastic in Rome22. If
Annibale had painted such an important work, surely his great friend, the scholar writer, Msgr. G.B. Agucchi
would have recorded it and equally it would have been unlikely to escape the attention of the Roman biogra­
pher, G.P. Bellori. The hieratic character of the present portrait does not fit easily into Annibale’s known
portrait style in which he emphasizes contact between the viewer and the sitter and displays his acute insight
into the latter’s psycho-logical outlook. Indeed the only portrait so far identified with Annibale in Rome is
the highly expressive image of Agucchi himself, today in the City Art Gallery, York.23 Pepper believed in
1987 that Annibale must be excluded from consideration for the portrait of Camillo. Catherine Johnston,
indeed, observed in 2016 (Ms. communication 20 September) that ‘isn’t it the acute sensitivity to colour
in the execution of the portrait combined with the stiff, slightly naive quality of the painting indicative of a
young artist still having to seek the guidance of Scalvati in the execution of a formal ecclesiastical portrait
that makes an attribution to Reni convincing’.

More or less the same case can be made against Ludovico. Apart from one month during 1602, he was never
present in Rome and there is no record of his executing such a portrait. There is no evidence from the rest of
his activity to indicate that this work is a plausible addition to his oeuv­ re. Finally, Agostino was in Rome briefly
in the late 1590s and could only have painted such a work then. Further, there are two sheets of drawings,
probably by him though at least one has been given to Annibale in the past, in which Cardinal Camillo is

22 Catherine Johnston writes (Ms. communication 20 September 2016) ‘Annibale, who was likely still on the Farnese payroll,
would have been too busy finishing off with his ceiling in their palace (and having a nervous breakdown due to the poor
remuneration he received for it) to consider undertaking a commission to paint Camillo, although one wonders under what
circumstances he did make such pen sketches’. See Figs.7 but also see note 23 below.

23 City Art Gallery, York, Catalogue of Paintings, 1961, I, p. 16, no. 787, as Domenichino. This work has been convincingly
attributed to Annibale Carracci by Silvia Ginzburg, ‘The Portrait of Agucchi at York reconsidered’, The Burlington
Magazine, 136, 1994, pp. 4-14. The Agucchi portrait, typical of Annibale’s ‘lively’ style contrasts with the more hieratic
treatment of the Camillo Borghese portrait discussed here. More recently, however, the attribution to Domenichino has
been reconfirmed by C.Whitfield in The Genius of Rome: 1592-1623, B.L.Brown (ed.), exh. Cat. The Royal Academy of
Arts, London, 2001, p.163.

57