RENI, Guido

The nude figure of Adam in the niche to the left of the altar alludes the original sin, which has been overcome thanks to Mary’s contribution. The nude Eve that was originally pictured in the opposite niche, an indispensable figure in such a context, was painted over by the pope’s request, replaced by an unidentified prophet.

In the lunettes of the main room the scenes Presentation of Mary to the Temple (left) and Annunciation to Coaching (right) are depicted. The two paintings were executed by Giovanni Lanfranco and Antonio Carracci, possibly after their own design sketches. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Reni was responsible for the overall planning of the decoration, and purportedly engaged the other painters only because the pope wished it.

In the Boeotian version of the legend, followed by Ovid (Met. 10:560-707), Atalanta was an athletic huntress. Her way with her suitors was to challenge them to a race in which the loser was punished with death. She remained unbeaten and a virgin until Hippomenes (elsewhere named Melanion) took her on. As they ran he dropped three golden apples, given to him by Venus, and since Atalanta could not resist stopping to pick them up she lost the race. They later made love in a temple of Cybele, which offended the goddess so much that she turned them both into lions.

In the picture Atalanta is shown in the act of stooping to pick up an apple as Hippomenes overtakes her.

There are two versions of this paining, one in Naples and another in Madrid, and recently there have been heated debates about both their autography and dating. While most scholars recognize the Madrid canvas as an autograph work, there have been serious reservations about the Neapolitan canvas, deemed it a workshop copy.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Atalanta, Act 3 (excerpts)

This composition is calculated and refined. It highlights the contradictory gestures of the unbeatable athlete Atalanta bending down to pick up the golden apple dropped by Hippomenes. Thanks to his stratagem, the youth is about to win the contest. The idea of movement is rendered almost exclusively by the billowing cloaks. The ivory smooth bodies of the two contestants clearly stand out remarkably against the gray-brown background.

There are two versions of this paining, one in Naples and another in Madrid, and recently there have been heated debates about both their autography and dating. While most scholars recognize the Madrid canvas as an autograph work, there have been serious reservations about the Neapolitan canvas, deemed it a workshop copy.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Atalanta, Act 3 (excerpts)

During Guido Reni’s second stay in Rome he directly tackled themes from classical Antiquity. While this composition was openly derived from classical art, it was meant in the spirit of purest love and has a genuine if rather insipid beauty.

Though a ceiling decoration, it is composed in the form of a frieze as if painted on a wall. Here the artist was rebelling against the spatial researches which at that time were exciting such passionate interest in Lanfranco and Pietro da Cortona.

This ceiling painting represents Apollo-Helios on the Chariot of the Sun Led by Aurora Followed by the Horae.

A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a “quadro riportato,” which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. If a picture with the perspective of a panel painting is shifted to the ceiling, it is called a “quadro finto” (fictious picture). In such a case the painted architectural framing is replaced by a painted or three-dimensional picture frame; Guido Reni’s Aurora in the Casino Pallavicini-Rospiglioso is a clear example of this approach. Here the monumentality of the figures, meant to be seen up close, largely eliminates the picture space, which is only suggested as a horizon.

Reni’s Baptism of Christ, created in the mid 1620s as a major masterpiece of his mature style, is based on principles of composition similar to those applied in The Massacre of the Innocents. The painting is built up into three clearly distinct planes. At the very front, Christ bows beneath the baptismal cup, which John the Baptist pours over him with his raised right hand. The Baptist is standing or, rather, slightly kneeling over Christ on the banks of the Jordan. Below the arc formed by these two figures facing each other in humility, we see two angels who, together with a third figure at the outside left, are holding Christ’s robes in readiness. Behind that, the trees, clouds and deep blue sky combine to create a sense of indefinable distance from which the Holy Spirit floats down in the form of a dove.

The entire scene, in its structure and colority, is of overwhelming simplicity. The act of baptism itself is entirely void of bright colours. The matt and shimmering flesh tones of the two nude figures stand out clearly against the middle ground and background, where everything is dominated by the solemn purity of the three primary colours red, yellow and blue. On another level, however, all the figures are closely linked in that expression of complete spiritual devotion that Reni could convey like no other artist.

Reni was able to create a balance of strictly disciplined compositional form and profound sentiment that his many imitators failed to achieve.

On the inner fa�ade above the door the multifigured scene of Mary’s birth is painted. It is a visual and iconographic counterpart to the altarpiece, the Annunciation, an oil painting by Reni.

The picture is structured into foreground, middle distance, and background. The dominant impression is one of bustling familiarity in the women’s chamber. The influence of D�rer’s woodcut is apparent inn the layout of the picture and the design of St Anne’s bed in the background. However, borrowings from Ghirlandaio’s Mary cycle are also apparent. The size of the individual figures lends the event a certain solemnity; the women exhibit an ideal monumentality that is indebted to Raphael.

The size of the individual figures lends the event a certain solemnity; the women exhibit an ideal monumentality that is indebted to Raphael. That debt is particularly apparent in the figure of the young woman carrying a copper bowl, whose spirited turn of the head ties together what is taking place in the background and the foreground.

The painting was sent as a present to Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici with a letter of January 4th, 1640 by Marchese Cospi of Bologna. This very beautiful painting belongs to the last period of Guido Reni, and in its very delicate, pale, refined colour especially, it appears as “one of the most striking testimonies of the surprising poetical evolution of Reni in the last years of his life ” (Cavalli). Being celebrated, it was carried off to Paris by the Napoleonic army from 1799 to 1815.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

Jules Massenet: Cleopatra, Cleopatra’s aria

The circumstances of the commission of this painting are slightly unusual. According to the Bolognese connoisseur, Malvasia, the painting was one of four half-length figures undertaken in a competitive spirit for the Venetian merchant Boselli by Palma Giovane, Niccolò Renieri, Guercino and Guido Reni. Palma Giovane seems to have acted as the intermediary in the negotiations and, since he died in 1628, it can be deduced that the related paintings date from towards the close of the 1620s or the early 1630s. After Boselli’s death, the Cleopatra passed into the collection of Renieri and shortly afterwards into that of Domenico Fontana. Several copies are known.

The subject of Cleopatra with the asp was popular during the seventeenth century and Reni evolved a number of half- and three-quarter-length interpretations. The sequence begins with the depiction of a more regal Cleopatra in Potsdam (Sanssouci), dating from about 1625-26, continues with the present painting, and is developed in those in Florence (Palazzo Pitti), London (private collection) and Rome (Capitoline Museum), all of which date from the late 1630s or early 1640s. A three-quarter-length composition was again chosen by the artist for his treatment of Lucretia and the Magdalen.

In this Cleopatra Reni demonstrates his skill as a draughtsman in the foreshortening of the head seen from below, and his competence as a designer in his use of diagonals. There is also an abundance of skill in the portrayal of the expression, the modelling of the flesh, the swathes of drapery, and the use of fresh, light colours - pink and white - set against a dark background. All these elements are components of the classicism associated with the followers of Annibale Carracci, of which Reni was a leading exponent. It was a style for which he was universally admired both during his own time and in the eighteenth century, at the end of which his reputation waned. Reni’s art was appreciated for its grace and finesse, the result of sound jjudgment and flowing brushwork.

The subject is taken from the Lives of the Caesars by Plutarch, in which Cleopatra’s suicide in 30 BC is described. Following Mark Antony’s defeat by Octavian at the Battle of Actium, an asp was smuggled in to Cleopatra in a basket of figs. Her death resulted from its bite. Mark Antony also committed suicide.

Guido Reni intended to try his luck in Rome, arriving there by the end of 1601. In Rome Caravaggio captured Reni’s attention. He was powerfully attracted to Caravaggio, and this can be gleaned at its highest level in the Crucifixion of St Peter, painted for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. It was a brief digression, however, from which he emerged a mature artist convinced that his path was precisely the opposite of the one taken by Caravaggio.

The paintings in the cupola vault are the Coronation of the Virgin and Choirs of Angels, while in the pendentives the four prophets Moses, David, Solomon, and Isaiah appear.

The subject of this painting is most certainly in keeping with the repertoire of the Caravaggisti, but is portrayed here with elegant detachment rather than tragic sentiment. David’s pose is that of a dandy, with red feathered hat and his body illuminated by a moonlike light and barely covered by a rich cloak trimmed with fur; the light softly defines his body, while the shadow is propagated from the background. The youth is contemplating the giant severed head of Goliath; the action has already taken place and the drama has already melted into meditation.

The subject of David and Goliath was a great success: there is a beautiful version in the Louvre and copies can be found in various museums all over Europe.

This painting can be compared directly with Caravaggio’s painting of the same subject.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Johann Kuhnau: The Fight between David and Goliath (No. 1 of the 6 Stories from the Bible illustrated in music)

Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, committed suicide, as she could not endure the shame of being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, as Livy related. This deed secured the legendary Roman lady a place in the series of exemplary females that in European painting, particularly in court circles, were depicted as examples of virtue.

The painting is also known as Christ with the Reed.

You can view other depictions of the Education of the Virgin in the Web Gallery of Art.

Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587-1626), after becoming the sixth duke of Mantua, commissioned new pictorial decoration for the ducal apartments. To decorate the galleries halls of his palace of delights, the duke commissioned Guido Reni to make a cycle of large canvases, which have been identified with the Labours of Hercules, now in the Louvre. The four pictures were made between 1617 and 1620 and without some disputes between the duke and the artist. The series is dedicated to Hercules, who was understood as a champion of physical strength and moral integrity and who was held up by modern princes as a model for the exercise of their political power.

The scenes Reni illustrated were the death of Hercules on the funeral pyre; the battle between Hercules and Achelos for the hand of Deianira; the abduction of Deianira by the centaur Nessus; and finally Hercules vanquishing the Hydra, the only canvas that actually represents one of the mythical hero’s twelve labours. In each scene the setting is neglected in favour of the monumental representation of the figures, which become the entire focus of the viewer’s attention. They derive from the examples of Hellenistic sculpture that Reni would have studied during his time in Rome, and they dominate the picture plane with their powerful anatomies and deliberate gestures.

Ferdinando Gonzaga (1587-1626), after becoming the sixth duke of Mantua, commissioned new pictorial decoration for the ducal apartments. To decorate the galleries halls of his palace of delights, the duke commissioned Guido Reni to make a cycle of large canvases, which have been identified with the Labours of Hercules, now in the Louvre. The four pictures were made between 1617 and 1620 and without some disputes between the duke and the artist. The series is dedicated to Hercules, who was understood as a champion of physical strength and moral integrity and who was held up by modern princes as a model for the exercise of their political power.

The scenes Reni illustrated were the death of Hercules on the funeral pyre; the battle between Hercules and Achelos for the hand of Deianira; the abduction of Deianira by the centaur Nessus; and finally Hercules vanquishing the Hydra, the only canvas that actually represents one of the mythical hero’s twelve labours. In each scene the setting is neglected in favour of the monumental representation of the figures, which become the entire focus of the viewer’s attention. They derive from the examples of Hellenistic sculpture that Reni would have studied during his time in Rome, and they dominate the picture plane with their powerful anatomies and deliberate gestures.

This painting is dated to Reni’s youthful period in Bologna in the 1590s when he was working under the influence of his teacher, the Flemish painter, Denys Calvaert.

This painting may be dated to Reni’s youthful period in Bologna in the 1590s when he was working under the influence of his teacher, the Flemish painter, Denys Calvaert.

The conception and execution of this work clearly show an affinity with Calvaert’s small devotional works on copper, combining the colour and detail that Calvaert brought from his Flemish heritage with the mannerist tradition found in Bologna.

The personifications of the ten virtues are distributed across the walls of the chapel and the faces of the pilasters. Caritas and Humilitas stand across from each other on the pilaster of the choir arch.

Beginning in 1607, Scipione Borghese, the art-loving nephew of Camillo Borghese, elected pope as Paul V, gave Guido Reni a series of important commissions, on which he was assisted by Annibale Carracci’s pupils. In the fall of 1609 Reni was given the commission to paint the pope’s private chapel in the Palazzo del Quirinale. The chapel, consecrated to the Annunciation to the Virgin, was on the piano nobile. The actual painting took a total of seven months. Nevertheless, payments to Reni stretched out over two years, until 1612. Reni was assisted in the execution of the painting by Giovanni Lanfranco, Francesco Albani and Antonio Carracci. The identification of the works executed by Lanfranco and Antonio Carracci is uncertain. After years of debate it is now generally agreed that each of them painted one of the two lunettes in the main room of the chapel. Francesco Albani painted the seven putti in the left-hand niche in the choir. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Reni was responsible for the overall planning of the decoration, and purportedly engaged the other painters only because the pope wished it.

The paintings of this chapel are among Reni’s most outstanding works from a time when he was at the height of his powers. He painted a cycle of the Virgin concentrating on scenes related to the subject of the Immaculate Conception. In the small cupola of the main room we are shown God’s election of Mary surrounded by choirs of angels, and in the pendentive below appear the four prophets Moses, David, Solomon, and Isaiah. In the lunettes of the main room the scenes Presentation of Mary to the Temple (left) and Annunciation to Joachim (right) are depicted.

The cupola-like vault of the choir shows God the Father with arms outspread, surrounded by a glory of angels singing the Virgin’s praises. The nude figure of Adam in the niche to the left of the altar alludes the original sin, which has been overcome thanks to Mary’s contribution. The only narrative wall painting in the choir, on the left wall, is striking because of its unusual and rarely depicted subject matter. Mary, wearing a red dress and with her hair falling loosely across her shoulders, is bent over her sewing. She is framed by two adult angels while above her hover two putti with inscription ribbons alluding to her predestined role as mother of God.

On the inner fa�ade above the door the multifigured scene of Mary’s birth is painted. It is a visual and iconographic counterpart to the altarpiece, the Annunciation, an oil painting by Reni.

The barrel vault and the lunettes in the extensions off the choir are filled with vivacious, charmingly arranged, frolicking putti with inscription ribbons and symbols of the Virgin (lily, palm branches, rose bush, olive branches) that combine to form an aesthetically pleasing ensemble.

The picture shows a view of the chapel toward the choir: in the vault, God the Father giving benediction with angels, the altarpiece with Reni’s Annunciation to the Virgin.

Joseph was the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob and of Rachel. His numerous older brothers were strictly only half-brothers, being the sons of Leah or of handmaidens. The events of his romantic life story have been depicted continuously in Christian art from the 6th century onwards. The medieval Church saw the episodes of his life as a prefiguration of the life of Christ, and it is to this that he owes his important place in Christian art.

When in Egypt as a slave, Potiphar, captain of the Pharaoh’s guard, bought Joseph from the Ishmaelites and made him steward of his household (Gen. 39:7-20). Potiphar’s wife ‘cast her eyes over him and said, “Come and lie with me.”’ He refused her though she continued to press him. One day when they were alone together she clutched his robes, pleading with him to make love to her. At this, Joseph fled so precipitately that he left his cloak at her hands. When Potiphar came home she avenged her humiliation by accusing Joseph of trying to violate her, using the cloak as evidence. Joseph was promptly thrown into prison.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

�tienne Nicolas M�hul: Joseph, aria

The only narrative wall painting in the choir, on the left wall, is striking because of its unusual and rarely depicted subject matter. Mary, wearing a red dress and with her hair falling loosely across her shoulders, is bent over her sewing. She is framed by two adult angels while above her hover two putti with inscription ribbons alluding to her predestined role as mother of God (VOCAVIT IS QUI VOCAT EAM A PRINCIPIO). The scene is read as Mary’s service in the temple, preceding the Annunciation. According to the Golden legend, this phase in Mary’s life was characterized by daily prayer and needlework that caused her to become more holy while experiencing the constant company of angels.

The seven putti above were painted by Francesco Albani.

Though the historical significance of Caravaggio and his enormous influence on Baroque painting cannot be overlooked, we should not ignore the fact that there was considerable resistance against the more extreme tendencies in his art, such as the loss of the heroic sphere, or the presentation of the everyday and the ordinary. His greatest rival, whose influence was to extend far beyond that of Caravaggio well into the 18th and 19th centuries, was undoubtedly the Bolognese artist Guido Reni. An early work such as The Massacre of the Innocents bears clear traces of his initial links with Caravaggio and, at the same time, already reveals the most important arguments against him.

Before a landscape bathed in light, but set with dark and heavy architecture, a group of eight adults and eight children (including the putti distributing the palm fronds of victory) has been skilfully arranged. The unusual vertical format, rarely used for this theme, and above all the symmetrical structure of figural counterparts indicate that Reni was particularly interested in a specific problem of composition: that of achieving a balance between centripetal and centrifugal movement while combining them in a static pictorial structure. Reni also seeks to achieve this equilibrium in his expression of effects and in the distribution of colour accents.

At the beginning of the 17th century the followers of Caravaggio and Carracci vied with each other for predominance. Some sought a classical approach and a serene harmony of forms and colours, others were intent on humbly capturing simple everyday life set in a powerful contrast of light and shadow. But there was no hard and fast dividing line between them and even classical painters like Guido Reni in his Moses is influenced by Caravaggio’s heroic dramatic style. This new humble yet monumental language became an international phenomenon.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Gioacchino Rossini: Moses, Moses’ Prayer

Angered by the worship of the golden calf, we see Moses shouting and making a gesture that is at once imperious and violent, at the moment prior to the breaking of the Tables of the Law.

For Pope Paul V (Camillo Borghese) Guido Reni painted the ceilings of two rooms in a new addition to the Vatican palace that the pope and his nephew, the art-loving Scipione Borghese used as audience rooms. In the three framed ceiling panels of the papal audience room, Reni illustrated, in an obvious borrowing from Raphael, The Mysteries of the Faith: The Transfiguration, Acension of Christ, and Miracle of the Pentecost.

In the lunettes of the main room the scenes Presentation of Mary to the Temple (left) and Annunciation to Coaching (right) are depicted. The two paintings were executed by Giovanni Lanfranco and Antonio Carracci, possibly after their own design sketches. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Reni was responsible for the overall planning of the decoration, and purportedly engaged the other painters only because the pope wished it.

The biblical source for the painting is Matthew 14:6-11 or Mark 6:21-8, where the daughter of Herodias danced for her stepfather, Herod, on his birthday. As a reward he promised her anything she wanted and, prompted by her mother, she chose the head of Saint John the Baptist, which she then carried to Herodias on a silver charger. The daughter subsequently became known in literature as Salome, and the theme was memorably treated in the nineteenth century by Richard Strauss and Oscar Wilde amongst others.

You can view other depictions of Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 15 minutes):

Richard Strauss: Salome, closing scene

This drawing is a sketch for the figure of a girl in the scene Birth of the Virgin from the fresco cycle in the Cappella dell’Annunziata, Palazzo Quirinale, Rome.

The tale behind this little masterpiece comes down to us from the account of Chantelou (1665), who repeats it as a story told to him by Bernini. Apparently, Guido Reni was called to Rome to carry out a fresco either in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano or that of Santa Maria Maggiore, but found himself out of practice in the fresco medium. To practice his technique, he had a little base of mortar prepared for him, and in the presence of Cardinal Francesco Barberini painted the sleeping putto - a work that shows incredible freshness - before the base even had the time to dry. The little fresco passed into the collection of Francesco Barberini in January of 1629.

Formerly it was held that the fresco project to which Bernini refers must be the decoration of the Cappella Paolina in S. Maria Maggiore (c. 1610). This early date is incongruous with the story, however, for in 1610 Francesco Barberini was only thirteen and had not yet moved to Rome. Bernini himself was evidently not certain for what fresco commission Reni prepared this practice sketch. According to him the work requested of Reni was instead the fresco of Attila in St. Peter’s Basilica, for which the artist was called to Rome from Bologna in 1627. This date is confirmed by the fact that it is just a short time later, in 1629, that the “sleeping putto” was first recorded in the collection of Francesco Barberini.

There was a famous competition between Domenichino and Guido Reni in the Oratorio di Sant’Andrea. There Domenichino depicted the martyrdom of St Andrew, Reni the apostle proceeding to the execution site.

St Cecilia is a Christian saint and virgin martyr believed to have lived in the 2nd or 3rd century. She is the patron saint of music, her attribute being the organ. However, she is often represented with other musical instruments.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Girolamo Frescobaldi: Ricercar No. 8

This painting played a crucial role in the cult around St Filippo Neri. It was commissioned in 1614, a year in which the proceedings that were to lead to Neri’s beatification and finally canonisation took a positive turn. The picture was destined for the recently completed chapel that was eventually to house the relics of the saint, the founder of the Congregation of the Oratory, who died in 1595.

The use of copper support was popularised in Bologna by the Flemish artist Denys Calvaert, in whose studio had had the opportunity to learn the technique of painting on copper. Reni often returned to the use of a copper support during his career, producing paintings that were particularly suitable for private devotion. In this painting a musician angel appears to St Francis, who is surrounded by the instruments of penitence and meditation, and depicted asleep with his hand resting on a skull. The subject of angelic consolation became popular during the sixteenth century, when a number of Counter-Reformation tracts endorsed the validity of St Francis’s mystical experiences.

This painting is an early work by Reni, executed during the painter’s sojourn in Rome. St Jerome is depicted here as a penitent hermit, beating his breast with a stone to harden his spirit against temptations of the flesh. The representation is based on the four years the scholar spent in the wilderness after converting to the Christian faith.

The painting was executed by the workshop of Guido Reni.

The resting Mary in the background indicates that the scene is connected with the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt.

Executed by Reni for the Cardinal Antonio Santacroce, this painting of the Magdalene was presented by Valerio Santacroce to Cardinal Antonio Barberini in December 1641, after the death of its original owner. Its completion can be securely dated to 1633, the year in which Vizzani published an encomiastic description of the picture.

The image of the penitent Mary Magdalene enjoyed great popularity between the late sixteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century. Cardinal Baronius, in his hard-hitting polemics against Protestantism, employed the subject (along with that of the penitent St Peter) to emphasize the necessity and validity of penitence, a sacrament discarded by the reformers. The penitent Magdalene was something of a iconographic specialty for Reni, who executed various versions to please a public that prized them and continually requested them. The Barberini collection included an other Reni Magdalene with a Skull, similar to the present work but for the three-quarter length of the figure. Executed during the artist’s brief sojourn in Rome in 1627, the second Barberini Magdalene has been identified in a private collection.

A splendid example of the mature style of Reni, the National Gallery’s painting is characterized by a profound classicism in the monumental and noble figure of the saint. The refined chromatic range, lit by a cold and silvery light, is also typical of Reni’s art in the 1630’s. The Penitent Magdalene is chronologically connected, though problematically, to a third Barberini Magdalene attributed to Vouet or one of his close followers: datable to 1626-27, the composition of the latter painting is very close to that of the Reni.

Guido Reni repeated the theme of the apostles and evangelists several times. There are in existence two copies of the evangelist series in Rome and Naples. The St Matthew belonging to the Vatican Picture Gallery is very similar in typology to those of the two series, it could be part of yet another lost series.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 8 minutes):

Johann Sebastian Bach: St. Matthew Passion BWV 244 (excerpts)

During his career Reni and his workshop produced two types of images of St Sebastian, which exist in various versions. The first type, from around 1615, exists in the autograph work now in the Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Reni returned to the subject around 1616-17, with a different, larger composition. Many versions exist of this work, the painting in the Dulwich Gallery, London, is most likely the original and first one.

Powerfully Caravaggesque in its dramatic chiaroscuro, Reni’s Sebastian is shown as a striking nude, indebted in its form to antique sculpture and to the classicism of the Bolognese school of the Carracci

During his career Reni and his workshop produced two types of images of St Sebastian, which exist in various versions. The first type, from around 1615, exists in the autograph work now in the Musei di Strada Nuova, Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. Reni returned to the subject around 1616-17, with a different, larger composition. Many versions exist of this work, the painting in the Dulwich Gallery, London, is most likely the original and first one.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Guillaume Dufay: Aurea luce, hymn for the feast of Sts Peter and Paul

This graceful and serene painting was executed after Reni between 1615 and 1620 after Reni had been several times to Rome.

Reni is known to have painted at least three other versions of the Egyptian queen’s ecstatic demise. This version, painted c. 1625, was enlarged at top and bottom at a later date.

This altarpiece was commissioned by the Genoese banker Ottavio Costa around 1605. Here Reni combined his earlier compositions of St Cecilia (in the Santa Cecilia Trastevere, Rome) into a highly consistent image. This painting is a fine example of the way Guido Reni tried to absorb the whole range of artistic innovations created by among others the Carracci and Caravaggio.

Paintings of Mary Magdalene were very popular in the 17th century, Guido Reni painted many versions of this subject.

The subject is taken from Ovid (Met. 9:101-133). On a journey, Hercules and Deianira came to a river where the centaur Nessus was the ferryman. While carrying Deianira across he attempted to ravish her. Hercules, already on the further bank, drew his bow and slew Nessus.

This painting belongs to the cycle of Hercules, intended for the Duke of Mantua. The artist applies successfully the study of the human body, blending a naturalistic touch with his passion for Greek statues. The joyful ardour which is expressed on the face of the young centaur carrying off Deianira should be noted.

This painting was commissioned c. 1626 by Philip IV of Spain.

This painting was commissioned by Ferdinando Gonzaga, the sixth duke of Mantua. He intended to decorate rooms in the Palazzo Ducale. The pendant of the painting, the Judgment of Paris, seems to be lost.

The unusual shape of the canvas is a reminder of its original use as a chimney-breast cover. The well balanced figure of the hero slaking his thirst after his victory is set against a dramatic landscape littered as far as the eye can see with the corpses of his enemies.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Samson, Part 1 Sinfonia, recitative and chorus