beside the easel

Self-Portrait of the Artist holding a Palette, ca.1635 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , known as Guercino was born on February 8, 1591 in Cento, a small city near Ferrara. He is one of the great masters of the Italian Baroque and poet of painters. Noted for his speed and efficiency, Guercino also worked in a number of mediums with equal passion whether ink, chalk, charcoal, or oils. His nickname, which means 'little cross-eyes' in Italian, derives in part from an apocryphal childhood accident where he supposedly awoke from a deep sleep as a child from a loud scream that caused his eyes to cross. Another story says something was thrown into his eyes. At any rate, he was self-taught as an artist from as early as nine years old and by his early teens was discovered by the eldest of the Carracci where he would spend some time at the Accademia Degli Incamminati before venturing out on his own. Despite his apparent 'handicap', his vision and talent would make him a giant t...

Coronation of the Virgin with St Augustine and St William of Aquitaine, ca.1616 Born on January 26, 1582, Giovanni Lanfranco was a Baroque painter and alumni from the Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna. A contemporary of such greats as Guido Reni and Domenichino , Lanfranco would take what he learned from the Carracci and make it uniquely his own, fusing tenebrism, color, Mannerism, Renaissance and Baroque into a very eclectic combination that at times seems to defy description. At times he can be quite Classical, other times Venetian, and yet sometimes he can be eerie enough to veer into the fringes of the surreal. Lanfranco could take the most overdone and tired theme or story and make it unreal...dreamlike and even bizarre. His subconscious seems to have been at the heart of his work, rather than merely keeping up with his colleagues or earning a paycheque. Lanfranco is, in many ways, a visionary who foresaw Surrealism by three hundred years. Note how the composition ...

Saint Sebastian, 1625 One of the most famous of the Bolognese, Guido Reni was born on November 4, 1575. Although his father Daniele was at the time a respected musician Guido was kind of a black sheep, preferring the brush to the harpsicord, and in his early twenties he joined the famous Carracci school Accademia degli Incamminati . For three years he absorbed the style of his favourite painter, Raphael with the teachings of the school whereupon he went to Rome with Annibale to help out with the Farnese frescos. A man of physically short stature and unassuming features, Reni would soon become a huge figure in the Baroque that would influence countless artists to come. His Saint Sebastian above, one of many Reni painted depicts the saint as youthful and handsome, an innocent victim rather than a martyr. This is a painter's painting. Study the brushstrokes and see how Reni alternates between blending and rough edges, thick highlights with sof transparent shadows, and his use o...