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 |