The Archangel Michael
Guido Reni (Bologna 1575 - 1642) Workshop/Follower of
17th-18th century
Oil on canvas (104 x 68 cm - Framed 109 x 68 cm)
Full details (Click HERE)
The proposed painting, of high quality, reproduces the famous Saint Michael the Archangel by Guido Reni, created in 1635 for the Capuchin Church in Rome (PHOTO 1), erected through the donation of Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1569-1646), brother of Urban VIII.
After an intense training in Bologna, in 1602, the twenty-seven-year-old Guido Reni went to Rome, soon becoming a famous interpreter of the taste of the most culturally influential circles, and winning the protection of great figures such as Popes Paul V, Urban VIII, and Scipione Borghese.
The Archangel Michael, engaged here in the fight against Evil, is represented as a young man of rare beauty, strong and delicate at the same time, who, with his sword drawn, repels an irritated devil into hell, whose head he tramples with his foot. The soft draperies envelop the angel's body with an intense classicism, where a balanced composition directs the viewer's attention to his angelic face.
Great was the recognition and esteem of his contemporaries, and the painting immediately met with incredible success, also thanks to the controversies it aroused from the Pamphili family, who had always been at odds with the Barberini family, who commissioned the canvas.
Reni, in fact, having learned that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Pamphili, the future Pope Innocent X, had defamed him, avenged himself by impersonating the Devil with his face. Guido Reni's cunning was to exploit the historical competition between two of the most influential families in seventeenth-century Rome, the Barberini and the Pamphili, for his personal revenge, and at the same time giving his work sudden celebrity.
Reni tried his hand at executing this subject on several occasions, much appreciated by his clients, thanks to the characteristics of formal cleanliness and overall balance of the composition that make it one of the cornerstones of Roman classicism even today.
With the help of his workshop he used to return several times to the same subjects, producing versions of his most successful compositions, which makes it difficult to disentangle autograph replicas, workshop works, often enriched by his intervention, copies that become autonomous reinterpretations by some of his best pupils.
We can say that the proposed canvas is the work of an artist from the workshop or a follower of Reni, created sometime after his death.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
The painting is sold complete with a gilded frame and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a descriptive iconographic card.
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