The Life of Guido Reni
University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. First American edition. Hardcover. Quarto. [8], 150pp. Original illustrated dust-jacket over grey cloth, with silver lettering on spine. Frontispiece portrait of Guido Reni*. Decorative initials. The main source of what we know about Guido Reni is The Life of Guido Reni by Malvasia. It lets us see a major artist of the Italian Baroque through the eyes of his own age. The text contains considerable detail on what Guido painted, as well as his commissions and patrons. As Reni's close friend, Malvasia took much of his material from first-hand knowledge; documentary evidence from the artist's recently discovered account book attests to the reliability of his biographer's text. But Malvasia's biography is far more than a chronicle of facts about Reni's art. Through a wealth of illustrative incidents based on eyewitness accounts we come to know Reni as an individual, driven by compulsions, beset by phobias, and isolated by pride. He appears as a man alone in a crowd, desperately anxious to defend his position as a major artist, enormously vulnerable to what were often imagined insults. We see him as an individual obsessed with sorcery and witchcraft and having an overwhelming compulsion for gambling that eventually brought about his ruin and hastened his death. No earlier biography provides so much material about an artist's inner life. The editors have added a substantial introductory essay to their translation of Reni's biography along with an analysis of the text and a section on Malvasia and his writings. Malvasia wrote the best early guidebook to the paintings of Bologna, and his vast compendium on the Bolognese School of painters is the most important regional "Lives of the Artists" that appeared in Italy during the 17th century. As this is the first book on Reni in English, the editors have added a section intended as an introduction to his rather complex stylistic development. Eight b/w photographic reproductions are included to show some of Reni's most important works (The Coronation of the Virgin; The Crucifixion of St. Peter; The Virgin Sewing, flanked by Angels; The Massacre of the Innocents; The Massacre of the Innocents (detail); Samson Victorious; Madonna and Child with Patron Saints of Bologna; Girl with a Wreath). Moderate sunning and shelf wear along edges of dust-jacket. DJ in overall good to good+, binding and interior in very good condition. g+ to vg. Item #38542
* Guido Reni (1575-1642) was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style. Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that studio by Albani and Domenichino. He may also have trained with a painter by the name of Ferrantini. When Reni was about twenty years old, the three Calvaert pupils migrated to the rising rival studio, named Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the "newly embarked", or progressives), led by Lodovico Carracci. They went on to form the nucleus of a prolific and successful school of Bolognese painters who followed Annibale Carracci to Rome. Like many other Bolognese painters, Reni's painting was thematic and eclectic in style.
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