Guercino biography definition

The Italian baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666) is generally known by his nickname Guercino, which means “.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (or the 'squinter', on account of an eye condition) was a self-taught artist and follower of Caravaggio.

Guercino was among the most prolific draughtsmen of the 17th century in Italy, and his preferred medium was pen and brown ink, although he also worked in red.

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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, (called) Il Guercino (1591-1666)

A native of the Italian town of Cento, near Bologna,Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (or the ‘squinter’, on konto of an eye condition) was a self-taught artist and följare of Caravaggio. He began his career as a mural painter in Rome and Bologna and is best known for his ecclesiastical subjects, chiefly of biblical figures. One of his greatest works is his Jacob blessing the sons of Joseph, donated to the National Gallery of Ireland in 2008 by Sir Denis Mahon (1910-2011), who was the foremost expert on the artist.

Although his most celebrated works utilise a ‘soft’ chiaroscuro style, there is no evidence that Guercino knew Caravaggio, but he was undoubtedly exposed to ‘tenebrism’ while working in Rome. Guercino’s career varied greatly in terms of stylistic experimentation and contemporary sources provide evidence that these changes were in part a consequence of reacting to the whims of his clients.&

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Guercino Caricatures

The Italian baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666) is generally known by his nickname Guercino, which means “little squinter.” The artist’s early biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693) tells us that Guercino became cross-eyed in his early childhood when he was suddenly awakened from his sova by an extremely loud and unusual noise; his fright was so great that his right eye was permanently frozen at an angle in his eye socket.

Perhaps Guercino’s own unusual appearance, recorded in several surviving portraits, helped make him a particularly curious and sympathetic observer of odd and abnormal facial features. His drawings, rendered with spare expressive lines, reveal the artist’s extraordinary ability to observe and capture on paper both the physical deformities and the psychological states of mind of many of his contemporaries. The word caricature comes from the Italian caricatura, which means something “loaded” or “charged.” Caricatur

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Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

Plate 189: Guercino and the Ludovisi

You may wish to see a page covering Villa Ludovisi first.
Guido Reni (1575-1642) and Francesco Albani (1578-1660) appeared in Rome shortly after 1600, Lanfranco (1582-1647) and Domenichino (1581-1641) came soon after, and the younger Guercino (1591-1666) arrived in 1621. (..) In the succeeding years these Bolognese artists firmly established a style in Rome which by and large shows a strengthening of the rationalist and classical tendencies. (..) From about 1608 onwards these masters were responsible for a series of large and important cycles of frescoes. Their activity in this field is an impressive testimony to their rapidly rising star. (..) Illusionism on the grandest scale was here introduced into Roman church decoration, and it was this that spelt the real end to the predominance of the classicism of the second decade. (..) This step had been taken by Guercino in the