
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Guercino Painting Reproductions Gallery 1 of 1
1591-1666Italian Baroque Painter
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 - December 9, 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.
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 Carravagista style (although it is unlikely he had been able to see any of the Roman Caravaggio's 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 Caracci 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. For the two years (1621-23) he spent in Rome, he was 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 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 payed him 300 ducats for the Flagellation of Christ painted in 1657.
He was remarkable for the extreme rapidity of his execution - he completed no fewer than 106 large altar-pieces for churches, and his other paintings amount to about 144. In 1626 he began his frescoes in the Duomo at Piacenza. Guercino continued to paint and teach up to the time of his death in 1666. He had amassed a handsome fortune.
21 Paintings of Guercino
Private Collection
Presentation in the Temple
$961
Cleveland Museum of Art Ohio USA
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
$683
$72.60
National Gallery of Art Ottawa Canada
Christ and the Woman of Samaria
$1013
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco California USA
Samson and the Honeycomb
$1087
Detroit Institute of Arts Michigan USA
Christ and the Woman of Samaria
$1049
$52.93
Detroit Institute of Arts Michigan USA
Assumption of the Virgin
$1324
$51.22
The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg Russia
St Jerome in the Wilderness
$791
The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg Russia
The Martyrdom of St Catherine
$997
The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg Russia
The Assumption of the Virgin
$3995
Louvre Museum Paris France
The Tears of St. Peter
$881
Louvre Museum Paris France
The Resurrection of Lazarus
$1857
Louvre Museum Paris France
St. Francis in Ecstasy and St Benedict with an ...
$1031
Louvre Museum Paris France
Hersilia Separating Romulus from Ratius
$2382
Minneapolis Institute of Arts Minnesota USA
Erminia and the Shepherds
$1670
$60.72
Norton Simon Museum of Art Pasadena USA
Suicide of Cleopatra
$766
Norton Simon Museum of Art Pasadena USA
Aldrovandi Dog
$659
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Netherlands
Caritas
$517
The Royal Collection London United Kingdom
The Libyan Sibyl
$730
Galleria e Museo Estense Modena Italy
Venus, Mars and Cupid
$864
Pinacoteca Nazionale Bologna Italy
Madonna of the Sparrow
$682
Kimbell Art Museum Fort Worth USA
Christ and the Woman of Samaria
$1095
$56.63