Guercino: 12 works

'Born in the northern Italian town of Cento, near Bologna and Ferrara, Guercino (literally "squinter," because he was cross-eyed) was largely self-taught. The painter Ludovico Carracci praised the young Guercino for his remarkable powers of invention: "He is a great draftsman and a terrific colorist ... even the top painters are awestruck."'

'It is known that Guercino painted only a few landscapes and almost all of them at the start of his career. This beautiful example is clearly inspired by Domenico Fetti, whose works Guercino had seen during his stay in Venice in 1618 or in Mantua in 1621.'

'"Guercino ('squint-eyed') was largely self-taught.'

'Although Guercino rarely painted portraits, he used a composition that had become a standard for papal portraiture since the Renaissance.'

'Guercino used brown ink energetically, describing the men's bodies swathed in long robes with quick, swirling pen strokes.'

'A highly talented and prolific draftsman, Guercino spent his career almost exclusively in Emilia.'

'He added floating sailboats and sliding gondolas, the fluttering flag, and small figures at the port to enliven his scene. Brown ink was Guercino's favorite medium for drawing.'

'Guercino drew caricatures for his own amusement and that of his friends. He filtered his acute observations of the people and events of everyday life through his sharp perception of the comic, a precedent established by his Bolognese predecessors the Carracci, and before them, Leonardo Da Vinci.'

'On the basis of its powerful light and shadow effects, this drawing may be dated at the 1630s, and is a sketch for the painting Guercino painted for Cardinal Colonna.'

'Giovanni Francesco Barbieri eked out his first fifty years in his native town, day after day waiting for the death of his hated rival Guido Reni.'

'He combined the luminous colors and naturalism characteristic of Venetian art with the dramatic compositions seen in the work of artists from Bologna.'

'This painting, created in 1650 during the artist's late period, is a superb example of Guercino's work both in terms of its quality and its provenance. This painting is recorded in the 1650 entry in Guercino's studio account book as, roughly translated, "David holding head of Goliath made for Lodovico Fermi."'