Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1591-1666 best known as Guercino or Il Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter from the region of Emilia, and active in Rome and Bologna. Guercino is Italian for squinter, a nickname that was given to him because he was cross-eyed. He is especially noted for his many superb drawings. Guercino was born at Cento, a village between Bologna and Ferrara. By the age of 17 he was associated with Benedetto Gennari, a painter of the Bolognese School. By 1615 he moved to Bologna, where his work earned the praise of an elder Ludovico Carracci. He painted two large canvases, Elijah Fed by Ravens and Samson Seized by Philistines, in what appears to be a stark naturalist Caravaggesque style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggios first-hand). They were painted for Cardinal Serra, Papal Legate to Ferrara. The Arcadian Shepherds (Et in Arcadia ego) was painted in 1618 contemporary with The Flaying of Marsyas by Apollo in Palazzo Pitti. His first style, he often claimed, was influenced by a canvas of Carracci in Cento. Some of his later pieces approach rather to the manner of his great contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness. Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime. He was then recommended by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio to the Bolognese Ludovisi Pope, Pope Gregory XV. His two years (1621-23) spent in Rome were very productive. From this stay date his frescoes of Aurora at the casino of the Villa Ludovisi and the ceiling in San Crisogono (1622) of San Chrysogonus in Glory; his portrait of Pope Gregory (now in the Getty Museum, and, what is considered his masterpiece, The Burial of Saint Petronilla or St. Petronilla Altarpiece, for the Vatican (now in the Museo Capitolini). The Franciscan order of Reggio in 1655 paid him 300 ducats for the altarpiece of Saint Luke Displaying a Painting of the Madonna and Child (now in Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City). The Corsini also paid him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.   Related Paintings of GUERCINO :. | St Romuald | Jacob, Ephraim, and Manasseh, painting by Guercino | Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishmael sg | Susanna and the Elders kyh | Susanna and the Elders |
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Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier
French Painter, 1743-1824
Ridolfo Schadow
1786-1822 Rome,Sculptor, son of Johann Gottfried Schadow. He trained in his father's studio in Berlin, exhibiting statues and reliefs at the Berlin Akademie exhibitions between 1802 and 1810. Work from this period included both mythological and religious subjects, such as the plaster relief The Flood (c. 1804; Berlin, Alte N.G.). In 1810, with his brother Wilhelm Schadow, Ridolfo moved to Rome, in 1811 taking over the Roman sculpture studio of Christian Daniel Rauch. Schadow's first Roman work, a statue of Paris (destr.; several copies, e.g. bronze, 1820; Potsdam, Schloss Charlottenhof) was exhibited at the Berlin Akademie in 1812, and it reveals the influence of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Although homesickness and lack of confidence drove Schadow briefly back to Berlin, he soon returned to Rome, along with Rauch. From this point Schadow's work is markedly individual: he brought a realistic, genre treatment to his figures, which drew on both classical tradition and the formal language of idealizing early 19th-century painting. He chose subjects that offered scope for idealization within a realistic context, as in the seated figures of a Woman Fastening her Sandals (marble, 1813; Munich, Bayer. Nmus.), a Woman Spinning (marble, 1816; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and a Girl with Doves (Innocence) (marble, 1820; Berlin, Alte N.G.). Under the influence of his brother Wilhelm and of Friedrich Overbeck, Schadow converted to Catholicism in 1814. His early death interrupted work on the plaster model for a sculptural group,
Giottino
1325-1370 Italian Giottino Gallery was an early Italian painter from Florence. His real name was Maso di Stefano or Tommaso di Stefano. Giottino's father was himself a celebrated painter; his naturalism earned him the appellation "Scimia della Natura" (Ape of Nature). He instructed his son, who applied himself with greater predilection to studying the works of the great Giotto. Since he formed his style on Giotto's works, Maso became known as Giottino. The frescoes in the chapel of San Silvestro in the Florentine Basilica of Santa Croce are attributed to Giottino; these represent the miracles of Pope St Sylvester as narrated in the "Golden Legend". A large number of other works have been attributed to Giottino including Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard and a marble statue erected on the Florentine campanile.