GUERCINO, GIOVAN FRANCESCO BARBIERI, detto il. — Painter, born at Cento on 8 February 1591, died at Bologna on 22 December 1666; he was called il G. because of the loss of his right eye, suffered at a very tender age. Having grown up and established himself in the Bolognese milieu, he was the most vigorous and gifted among the masters of that school and one of the principal exponents of seventeenth-century painting in the peninsula. His teacher during adolescence
the foundations of the reform of Gregorian chant, of which Solesmes became the driving centre. G. devoted his first essays to the liturgy: Considérations sur la liturgie catholique (3 articles in Le mémorial catholique [1830], republished in Mélanges de liturgie, d'histoire et de théologie, Solesmes 1887); De la prière pour le roi, 2 articles in l'Avenir (Oct. 1830, republished in the cited Mélanges); Les institutions liturgiques (3 vols., Paris 1840–42, 51); L'année liturgique (9 vols., Le
was Benedetto Gennari senior, a modest follower of the Carracci; but around the age of twenty, having settled in Bologna, he was attracted by their works, especially those of Ludovico.
Some mural decorations belong to the period 1615–17, executed in the Pannini house at Cento and now at the residence of the marchese Del Turco in Bologna; they reveal surprising qualities of landscape and rustic realism, but it was only in 1620 that the artist began his most felicitous and characteristic manner with the original S. Guglielmo d'Aquitania (Pinacoteca of Bologna), rich in animated, velvety chiaroscuro effects and warm ivory and brown tonalities. In the following years he was in Rome, where he absorbed the classicist ideals prevalent in that milieu, while also drawing upon post-Caravaggesque modes. More memorable than the monumental, though somewhat forced, canvas of the Seppellimento di s. Petronilla (1621) in the Galleria Capitolina is the imaginatively romantic decoration of the Aurora, frescoed in the casino of Villa Ludovisi, in which echoes of Dossi can be discerned. Returning to Cento in 1623, he remained there until 1646, though in 1620 he was in Piacenza to fresco the dome of that cathedral. During the second Cento period he produced, with tireless inspiration, works on every subject, though they are not always convincing, especially the large-scale canvases. One of his masterpieces of that period is the S. Bruno ai piedi della Vergine (Pinacoteca of Ferrara), of extraordinary plastic and luminous power, which almost recalls the Spaniards, including in the types. Having moved to Bologna in 1642, he set out along the path already trodden by Reni, losing his native qualities of form and incisive content. A great number of drawings and sketches by him also survive, in pencil, red chalk, and pen, among which are genuine jewels of expressive immediacy. Among his pupils, besides his nephews the Gennari, particular mention should be made of his brother Paolo Antonio (born at Cento in 1603 and died at Bologna in 1649), an excellent painter of still lifes. — Vedi tav. LXXXVII.