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The Transformation of Guercino
| Article
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20310 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
1,556 Words |
| Author
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Eric Gibson
Eric Gibson, art critic for the Washington Times, last wrote
on Henry Ossewa Tanner in the September 1991 issue of The
World & I. |
Aside from the sheer quality of the works of art it has put before us in the form of paintings and drawings, the two-in-one Guercino exhibition at Washington's National Gallery of Art has been a revelation for two reasons. First, it has brought to our attention a seventeenth-century artist from a region that has received rather less than its due over the years--the area around Bologna known as Emilia.
When it comes to discussions of Italian art between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rome, Florence, and to some extent Venice are storied cities, but Bologna is often given short shrift on international museum schedules. Yet any true understanding of the development of seventeenth-century Italian--and, to some extent, French--art is impossible without a knowledge of what went on there.
The second reason is that the show has served as a reminder that the career of Gustave Courbet in nineteenth-century France was not the only occasion when realism in art--the basing of one's art on close observation of the visible world--was considered revolutionary. The Carracci family, whose art greatly influenced the young Guercino, singlehandedly redirected the courses of seventeenth-century art through their return to nature.
The two Guercino exhibitions in question, which at the National Gallery have functioned as one, are Guercino: Master Painter of the Baroque and Guercino: Drawings from Windsor Castle. The former is a touring retrospective that debuted in Bologna last summer and arrived in Washington at the end of its tour by way of Frankfurt. The drawings exhibition is a touring retrospective as well, coming to the National Gallery halfway through its scheduled three-institution itinerary, having premiered at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth last December and being scheduled to make its final stop at New York's Drawing Center this summer.
In one sense, Guercino would seem to be an odd subject for a paintings retrospective: His most celebrated work is a fresco painted in 1621 in the Roman residence of his patron, Pope Gregory XV. Painted on the ceiling, Aurora depicts the mythical goddess of dawn riding across the heavens in her chariot, scattering flowers in her wake as she dispels the night. Seen from below, as if through an opening in the ceiling, it is an extraordinary work--a totally convincing illusion of the mythical figure racing across open sky.
Guercino was prolific as an easel painter, however, as well as voluble and
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