Libreria Alberto Govi

to Rome by his early patron Cardinal Ludovisi, the latter having been elected pope.
Guercino was charged with the decoration of the Loggia delle Benedizioni in Saint
Peter’s, a vast undertaking that in the end came to nothing because of the premature
death of the Pope (July 8, 1623). Nevertheless he received many important commissions,
both private and ecclesiastical. Guercino returned then to Cento, where he remained
until 1642. Although he was back in his native town, his fame was growing abroad. In
1632 Maria de’ Medici, Queen Mother of France, was on the point of inviting him to
the French court, when the idea had to be abandoned because of political troubles.
With Guercino’s move to Bologna in 1642 to take up the mantle as the city’s leading
painter, his work entered his final phase. At first he lived in the palace of Count Filippo
Aldrovandi, and then he moved his studio to the house he bought, that later came to
be known as the Casa Gennari (from the name of his heirs). The activity of Guercino’s
last years remains hard to assess. Although he was acclaimed more than ever (in fact
he produced painting for an international clientele including King Charles of England
and was visited by Queen Christina of Sweden in 1655 on her way to Rome), he
was beset by ill health and seems to have depended more and more on the help of
his nephews, Benedetto and Cesare Gennari. Guercino died in 1666 in Bologna. He
left an impressive legacy of nearly 400 paintings and well over 1,000 drawings that
demonstrate his extraordinary power of invention (cf. M. Turner, ed., Guercino: la
scuola, la maniera, i disegni agli Uffizi, Firenze, 2008, passim).
P. Bagni, Il Guercino e i suoi incisori, Roma, 1988, pp. 6-7 (Gatti) and pp. 90-91 (Curti);
G.G. Bertelà-S. Ferrara, Incisori Bolognesi ed Emiliani del secolo XVII, Bologna, 1973,
nos. 653a-674 (Gatti) and nos. 499a-518a (Curti); F. Gozzi, Il Guercino, Le stampe della
Pinacoteca civica [di Cento], Ferrara, 1996, pp. 13-14 (Gatti); J.T. Spike, The Illustrated
Bartsch, New York, 1981, XLI, pp. 109-130, nos. 118-139 (Gatti); C.A. Petrucci, Catalogo