Guido Reni - Buy or sell works
4 November 1575, Bologna (Italy) - 18 August 1642, Bologna (Italy)
Guido Reni was an Italian painter and etcher and is today counted among the most famous artists of the High Baroque period. Together with Caraccis, Domenichino and Guercino, he belonged to the representatives of the Bolognese School.
Guido Reni was born in 1575 as the only son of a family of musicians. His particular gift for art became apparent at a young age. He was therefore admitted as an apprentice to the prestigious studio of Denijs Calvaert, a friend of his father’s, at the age of just nine. His fellow students included painters like Francesco Albani and Domenichino. Reni left the studio after the death of his father and moved to the influential Accademia degli Incamminati, which was led by Ludovico Caracci. This institution was among Italy’s first art academies. His initial altar paintings were produced around this time. Reni left the Academy in 1598 after a dispute, creating his first series of prints the same year to mark the occasion of a visit by Pope Clemens VIII in Bologna.
He mainly worked in Rome as of 1600, where in the following years he received numerous commissions from the city’s most influential families. Reni was among the busiest painters under the pontificate of Paul V (Borghese), from whose family he received a large number of commissions. His major artistic influences included Raphael. Besides oil paintings, the artist also produced many frescoes. One of his most famous is the ceiling fresco for the Grand Hall at Casino dell' Aurora.
He returned to his home city of Bologna in 1614, which he only left to complete two commissions: he painted an altarpiece in Rome depicting the Holy Trinity on behalf of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in 1622 and produced a ceiling fresco for the San Gennaro Chapel in Naples in 1625.
Apart from a small number of portraits, Guido Reni spent his life concentrating on biblical and mythological subjects, among them Murder of the Children at Bethlehem (1611) and Archangel Michael (1636).
Guido Reno passed away 1642 in Bologna.
Reni’s oil painting Christ Bearing the Cross was sold for €491,000 at the Old Masters auction by Dorotheum Vienna on 19 April 2016.