PRESS RELEASE
GUIDO RENI. THE DIVINE
23 NOVEMBER 2022 TO 5 MARCH 2023

Exhibition annex
Press Preview: Tuesday, 22 November 2022, 11 am

With a large-scale exhibition opening to the public on 23 November 2022, the Städel Museum is rediscovering the former star painter of the Italian Baroque: Guido Reni (1575–1642). In his day, Reni was one of the most successful and celebrated painters in all of Europe, coveted by the most important patrons, including the Borghese Pope Paul V, the Duke of Mantua, and the Queen of England. Hardly appreciated in the nineteenth century due to other aesthetic preferences and later relegated to second place by the one-sided concentration on his temporary rival Caravaggio, he no longer holds the place he deserves in the public consciousness.

For the first time in over thirty years, the Städel Museum, in cooperation with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, is bringing together more than 130 of his fascinating paintings, drawings, and prints and thus offering a new perspective on Guido Reni. The painter was deeply religious and also superstitious, tremendously successful and hopelessly addicted to gambling, as one contemporary biography authoritatively informs us. Even during his lifetime, Reni was given the honourable epithet Il divino (“The Divine”) – this refers to his fame as an artist star who, aware of his skills, occasionally behaved like a diva. However, “The Divine” also refers to his themes: Reni is the painter of the divine par excellence. He had a profound effect on the religious iconography of European art and, like no-one else before or since, gave visual form to the beauty of the divine – be it the Christian kingdom of heaven or the world of the ancient gods. The enormous impact of his art is reflected in the countless variations of his depictions of the heads of Christ and Mary, with their upturned faces and heavenward gaze, reproductions of which still circulate widely today as picture pull-outs in Roman Catholic prayer books. Indeed, this unparalleled imitative reception history only served to tarnish Reni’s image, obscuring the actual qualities and other fascinating aspects of his art.

In addition to major works from the Städel Museum’s collection, such as the pivotal early copper panel Assumption of the Virgin (c. 1598/99) and the recently restored Christ at the Column (c. 1604), the exhibition features spectacular works from over 60 international museums and private collections, including the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Louvre in Paris. Added to this comes a string of newly discovered and never-before-exhibited works by the artist. Interspersed throughout this survey of Guido’s art are select images by the role models and contemporaries who influenced his practice (Raphael, Parmigianino, and Annibale Carracci, for instance) as well as rare historical documents, such as Reni’s revealing account book for the years 1609–1612.

Curator: Dr Bastian Eclercy (Head of Italian, French and Spanish Paintings before 1800, Städel Museum)
Project coordinator: Aleksandra Rentzsch (Research Assistant in Italian, French and Spanish Paintings before 1800, Städel Museum)
Supported by: Gemeinnützige Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH, Städelscher Museums-Verein e. V.
Media partner: Tagesspiegel, ARTE, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main Cultural partner: hr2-kultur

Download the complete press release here.

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