Category: Baroque art

Guido Reni and the Union of Drawing and Color

The enlightening exhibition “Guido Reni,” currently on view at the Prado Museum, is the first of its kind in Spain. Guido Reni (1575–1642) was one of the most celebrated painters of 17th-century Italy and was patronized by prominent popes, nobles, and monarchs throughout Europe. Reni, known by the epithet “Il Divino” (The Divine), is distinguished…


Caravaggio’s ‘Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy’

Artists throughout the centuries have been inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi, including Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. One of the artist’s early masterpieces is “Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy,” held in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut. This is the artist’s first known religious canvas and one of the…


Michelangelo’s Baroque Rival: The Moving Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

If artists as brilliant as Michelangelo and artworks as definitive as his “David” are rare, the year marking the 120th anniversary of that sculpture’s unveiling saw an event almost unparalleled in artistic history. For the first and maybe the last time, there was an artist who could rival Michelangelo both as a sculptor and a…


Simone Peterzano: The First Great Baroque Painter

Except among some specialist art historians, Simone Peterzano is generally known only as the teacher of Caravaggio: the notable, great master of Baroque painting. Beyond that, he tends to be dismissed as a competent but unexceptional artist. On closer inspection, he becomes a fascinating example of how such artists can lay the foundations on which great…