Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Groups, Theory of" to "Gwyniad": Volume 12, Slice 6Various
Science
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Groups, Theory of" to "Gwyniad": Volume 12, Slice 6
Various
Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Guido was personally modest, although he valued himself on his
position in the art, and would tolerate no slight in that relation; he
was extremely upright, temperate in diet, nice in his person and his
dress. He was fond of stately houses, but could feel also the charm of
solitude. In his temper there was a large amount of suspiciousness;
and the jealousy which his abilities and his successes excited, now
from the Caracci, now from Albani, now from the monopolizing league of
Neapolitan painters, may naturally have kept this feeling in active
exercise. Of his numerous scholars, Simone Cantarini, named II
Pesarese, counts as the most distinguished; he painted an admirable
head of Reni, now in the Bolognese Gallery. The portrait in the Uffizi
Gallery of Florence is from Reni's own hand. Two other good scholars
were Giacomo Semenza and Francesco Gessi.
The character of Guido's art is so well known as hardly to call for
detailed analysis, beyond what we have already intimated. His most
characteristic style exhibits a prepense ideal, of form rather than
character, with a slight mode of handling, and silvery, somewhat cold,
colour. In working from the nude he aimed at perfection of form,
especially marked in the hands and feet. But he was far from always
going to choice nature for his model; he transmuted _ad libitum_, and
painted, it is averred, a Magdalene of demonstrative charms from a
vulgar-looking colour-grinder. His best works have beauty, great
amenity, artistic feeling and high accomplishment of manner, all
alloyed by a certain core of commonplace; in the worst pictures the
commonplace swamps everything, and Guido has flooded European
galleries with trashy and empty pretentiousness, all the more noxious
in that its apparent grace of sentiment and form misleads the unwary
into approval, and the dilettante dabbler into cheap raptures. Both in
Rome and wherever else he worked he introduced increased softness of
style, which was then designated as the modern method. His pictures
are mostly Scriptural or mythologic in subject, and between two and
three hundred of them are to be found in various European
collections--more than a hundred of these containing life-sized
figures. The portraits which he executed are few--those of Sixtus V.,
Cardinal Spada and the so-called Beatrice Cenci being among the most
noticeable. The identity of the last-named portrait is very dubious;
it certainly cannot have been painted direct from Beatrice, who had
been executed in Rome before Guido ever resided there. Many etchings
are attributed to him--some from his own works, and some after other
masters; they are spirited, but rather negligent.
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