(Bologna 1575–1642)
Saint Peter,
oil on canvas, 61.3 x 49.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Aristocratic collection, Rome;
with Galleria Il Sagittario, Forlì (1993);
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
S. Pepper, Guido Reni’s practice of repeating compositions, in: Artibus et Historiae, Vienna 1999, 39, p. 38, p. 41 ill. no. 18 (as Guido Reni)

We are grateful to Daniele Benati for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph.

In the present work the Saint is depicted torn with regret on the night of Christ’s capture, creating a feeling of emotion and pity. The freedom with which the hair and beard are painted, and the firm rendering of the expressive lineaments of the Saint’s illuminated face are hallmarks of Guido Reni’s hand. The artist treated the subject of Saint Peter on several occasions: he also established prototypes for several other devotional subjects, such as the Magdalene and the Virgin at Prayer, which he repeated with great success. The present prototype attained considerable success according to Stephen Pepper (see literature, p. 38). Reni first experimented with this compositional type in 1633-34 in a painting now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid (inv. no. P219) and subsequently in another work of about 1637, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 243).

Guido Reni was born at Bologna in 1575, and he was the leading exponent of seventeenth century Bolognese classicism. After an initial apprenticeship in his native city at the Accademia degli Incamminati, the historic school founded by the Carracci, his talent became immediately evident, and he began receiving many commissions as an independent artist, as exemplified by the Coronation of the Virgin conserved in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. By the beginning of the seventeenth century he was in Rome where he became the interpreter of the taste of the most cultured and refined aristocratic patrons, receiving the protection of both Pope Paul V and Scipione Borghese, who entrusted him with countless highly prestigious commissions. During the years of his maturity he supplied works throughout Italy, though by 1614 he had settled permanently in Bologna.

‘Sweetness, grace, perfection’ – these are the three adjectives Sandrart used to describe Guido’s depiction of beauty (see J. von Sandrart, L’Academia todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura, Nuremberg 1675). Patience and study, as well as his adhesion to academic classicism and the balance of his compositions were to guarantee his success in the wake of Raphael. The extraordinary sense of harmony and the delicacy of his palette appealed to the taste of his patrons and fully reflected the aesthetic cannons of the age. In his Sfogamenti d’ingegno of 1614 the poet Pier Francesco Minozzi recalled him as follows: ‘Sì, è quel gran Guido, che ai nostri tempi è il Platone dei poeti muti, il Virgilio dei disegnatori, l’Aristotele dei pittori” [‘Yes, it is the great Guido, who in our day is the Plato of the silent poets, the Virgil of draughtsmen, the Aristotle of painters’].