Guido Reni

Guido Reni (1575–1642) was born in Bologna, trained under the Flemish painter Denys Calvaert, and divided his career between Bologna and Rome. Caravaggio, Raphael and Michelangelo are all recorded among his influences, and the combination is telling: he absorbed Caravaggio's drama without adopting his naturalism, holding instead to an ideal of grace inherited from Raphael. That balance made him one of the most sought-after painters in Italy and, for two centuries afterwards, one of the most copied. His heads of Christ and the Virgin, upturned and softly lit, became the standard devotional image across Catholic Europe — reproduced so widely that the original invention is easy to overlook. He ran a large studio in Bologna and trained a generation of painters there. Five works here, including Saint Jerome, Saint Mary Magdalene and Christ Embracing Saint John the Baptist.