From the talent of nature to the romanticism of reality: the creative path of Guercino, an outstanding figure in Italian 17th-century art.
In the panorama of the European Baroque the personality and work of Guercino have recently met with new popularity and visibility. An artist initially drawn toward a spontaneous kind of folk naturalism, as seen in works with pastoral-landscape subjects, Guercino later absorbed the chromatic lesson of Titian, making it the premise for his painting based on touch, in big, luminous liquid strokes. The catalogue of the exhibition held in Bologna in 1991, with a great many illustrations, presents an important selection of paintings covering the entirely chronological span of the artist’s activity, from his early works at the beginning of the 1600s to the late period (after 1632). The essays provide an introduction to the work of Guercino, outlining his artistic and theoretical profile, while analyzing his creative path from the talent of nature to the romanticism of reality.