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Guercino [Barbieri, Giovanni Francesco]

(b Cento, ?2 Feb 1591; d Bologna, 22 Dec 1666). Italian painter and draughtsman. He was one of the leading painters of the Bolognese school and one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of the Italian Baroque. His paintings show a command of subtle effects of light and dark, with the figures revealing a wide variety of gesture and facial expression, the result of the artist’s good grasp of human psychology. Guercino’s style changed dramatically during his long career. His early works are robust in handling, rich in muted colour and dramatic in lighting and composition. But after a short visit to Rome in 1621–3, his painting began slowly to alter as he came under the influence of a more classical style of painting, then so popular in official circles. He was deeply affected by the austere classicism of one of his greatest rivals, Guido Reni. Following Reni’s death in 1642, Guercino moved from his native Cento, where he had previously spent almost the whole of his career, to Bologna, and assumed the position of the city’s principal painter. His activity as a painter is particularly well documented, thanks to the extensive list of his commissions in Malvasia’s biography (based on documentation to which he had access in Guercino’s house), together with the Libro dei conti (account book) recording payments for his commissions, which was kept in Guercino’s studio from 1629 until his death by his younger brother, PAOLO ANTONIO BARBIERI, with whom he occasionally collaborated.

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  Reproduced by kind permission of Macmillan Publishers Limited, publishers of The Grove Dictionary of Art.
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