Giovanni Francesco Barbieri

known as GUERCINO (1591 Cento – 1666 Bologna)
SAINT JAMES

1650/51
Oil on Canvas, height: 223 cm, width: 166 cm

LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna
 
Inv. Nr. GE 2548
© LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna
 
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as GUERCINO
 
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri was born in Cento, Italy on February 1591 and died in Bologna on December 22, 1666. He is considered one of the foremost Baroque painters. According to his biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia, his nickname (the squinter) derives from the fact that he had a squint in his right eye following a childhood accident—a story that is not documented beyond all doubt, though. When he was seventeen, he was apprenticed to Benedetto Gennari (1563–1658), a painter of the Bolognese School. He was essentially self-taught, however. By 1615, he moved to Bologna, where his work was applauded by Lodovico Carracci (1555–1619). In 1621, Pope Gregory XV invited him to come to Rome where he stayed until the latter’s death two years after. Guercino was an artist already highly acclaimed during his lifetime. He was extremely productive and taught until his death in 1666.
 
His early style was influenced by the Carracci family and, above all, by their drawing school, the Accademia dei Desiderosi. Taking it as a model, Guercino founded his own academy in his native Cento in 1616, the Accadamia del Nudo. The numerous reforms of the Carraccis’ academy—the study of the human body after live nude models, the interest in natural light and its refraction on the human skin, and the general turn to a naturalist approach—were to inform Guercino’s production lastingly. His late work, which has more light and clarity, approached that of his contemporary Guido Reni (1575–1642). Guercino painted two large-size canvases in the style of Caravaggio (1571–1610), though he had probably never laid eyes on an original by the painter. It is the strong chiaroscuro contrasts so typical of both Caravaggio and Guercino which are always pointed out in discussions on the parallels between the two artists’ achievements. All in all, Guercino created more than a hundred altarpieces, about one hundred an d fifty paintings, as well as frescoes in the Villa Ludovisi and in San Crisogono in Rome and in the Piacenza Cathedral.