The Self Taught Italian Master: Il Guercino
How a Child Prodigy Became an Immortal Artist
Feb 8, 2009
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666)—better known as the Baroque master “Il Guercino”—painted his first Reggio Madonna at the age of about ten. While experts dicker over the date, sometime between 1600 to 1605, they are unanimous in placing its location on the front wall of the family’s home in Cento, Italy. Remarkably, the painting has survived the more than five centuries and still amazes art lovers and scholars.
To look at these early paintings and later masterpieces is to realize that even some of the greatest masters lacked funds to study. Discipline and practice were their tools. Guercino went on to become a favorite Pope Gregory; he had an international set patrons. By the time Guercino died at the age of 75, he had created more than a hundred altarpieces and equally as many paintings.
Guercino’s early works and frescos, particularly the series commissioned when he was just 24 years of age for Casa Pannini in Cento are like history lessons. They tell the story of what was going on in and around Cento. He portraiys peasants working the hemp fields in the Po River Valley. He paints the wheat harvest and peasants fishing the Reno River for prawn.
The warmth and naturalism that shine through in these frescos are what set him apart. Though the artist’s nickname refers to his crossed eyes, it is clear that his eye for the authentic was unclouded.
Even in his mature masterpieces, Guercino continued to cast peasant women in the leading roles. Sensuous folds of flesh are draped in boldly colored fabrics. Guercino uses light like a knife; it cuts through at odd angles, emphasizing features.
In “Sibyl,” for instance, a robust country girl is transformed into a pagan goddess with a sweaty carnality. Everything about her, from the rich blue and garnet robes to the turban around her head and an open book, is touched by light. In contrast, the background itself is dark and slightly reminiscent of a peasant kitchen.
Not without a sense of humor, Guercino also painted caricatures. One of the more amusing paintings is a caricature of Rinaldo Corradino, “by nature a ridiculous man.” He is portrayed in bleak clothing atop an equally bleak mule. His name is bannered across his back; a ripped-away noose dangles from his neck. As the poor creature makes his way through the back roads of Italy, the landscape and deep sky behind him look as if the artist had copied if from a fresco in the much earlier Casa Pannini series.
Guercino’s works can be seen until March 2 at the Italian Cultural Institue of New York. www.iicnewyork.esteri.it. If you can’t make the show, you will be able so see his works in Bologna, Italy, in Cento and in Rome. Of course, if you’re not planning a trip this year, his works are on view in many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum.
