Saturday, January 26, 2019

Guercino (1591-1666) - Mid-Career Paintings - Before 1640

Guercino
Semiramis receiving news of the revolt of Babylon
1624
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Guercino
Salome visiting John the Baptist in Prison
ca. 1624-26
oil on canvas
private collection

Guercino
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1624-25
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Guercino
St Gregory the Great with St Ignatius and St Francis Xavier
ca. 1626
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Messer Troilo Mattioli said:  "I would very much like to know one thing: whether we will reassume the very same body as the one we leave, or whether we will have a newly created one (because, if we think about it carefully, grain produces grain, but not the same grain that was sown); and, given that our body turns to dust, whether that same dust will be remade into flesh or not."

Messer Ruggiero Coradino replied:  "We will definitely reassume the same body that we leave when we die; this is something that human weakness finds difficult to comprehend, since it seems impossible that something that nature has formed over such a long time, using so many means, could be put together in an instant.  But if we consider our origin and the natural causes that underlie it, and if we bear in mind God's power, it doesn't seem to us impossible that he could bring this about.  Our first birth, on Earth, is natural, and the second will be miraculous.  Job announced this, saying: 'I will again be wrapped in my skin,' and note that he said 'my,' namely 'the same skin that I have now, no other.'  And in the example you gave, from Paul, about the grain, I say that grain is sown bare and it is born clothed, complete with stalks, but our body shall be of a different nature, even if it has the same flesh.  In this it will be different from grain, because that is reborn as the same species, with the same  nature, although its adornments are different, not the same grain as was sown by another.  Our flesh will be the same flesh, but with a different nature and with different adornments, because our first body was sown on the earth and was born there, but our resurrected body will have left behind earthiness, material weight, and corruptibility, and will arise spiritual, agile, nimble, and glorious."   

– Giovanni Andrea Gilio, from Dialogue on the Errors and Abuses of Painters (1564), translated by Michael Bury and Lucinda Byatt (Getty Research Institute, 2018)

Guercino
Portrait of Cardinal Francesco Cennini
1625
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guercino
Portrait of Francesco Righetti
ca. 1626-28
oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Guercino
Apparition of Christ to His Mother
1628-30
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Civica, Cento

Guercino
Sophonisba with Poison
1630
oil on canvas
Fondazione Sorgente Group,  Rome

Guercino
Death of Dido
1631
oil on canvas
Galleria Spada, Rome

Guercino
Penitent Magdalen
1632
oil on canvas
Fondazione Sorgente Group,  Rome

Guercino
Venus, Mars and Cupid
1633
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Guercino
St Augustine on the Trinity
(the saint encountering a little boy emptying the sea with a shell)

1636
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Guercino
Allegory of Painting and Sculpture
1637
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Guercino
St Peter Penitent
1639
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland