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Guido Reni (Italian, 1575-1642)
Madonna and Child, about 1628-30
Oil on canvas, 45 x 36 in. (114.3 x 91.4 cm.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lee Humber, in memory of their daughter, Eileen Genevieve, 55.12.1
In Catholic tradition Mary is the epitome of feminine purity, grace, and beauty. Artists had depicted these qualities long before the seventeenth century, but it is the work of Guido Reni that gives the fullest expression to these virtues. "Many believed," wrote Reni's biographer in 1686, ". . . that because of his great devotion, the Virgin deigned to appear before him.... No painter of any century knew how to represent her so utterly beautiful and modest."
Reni's Madonna and Child is the type of work regarded as the pinnacle of artistic perfection during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of Reni's contemporaries remarked that "we paint like mere mortals; he paints like an angel," and the artist's virtuosity is very much in evidence here. The deep violet background contrasts dramatically with the alabaster flesh of the two figures, endowing them with sculptural volume and weight. The elegant intimacy and tenderness of the figures are appropriate to the subject and the painting's function as a work intended for private devotion.
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