Guido Reni (bologna 1575 - 1642) Workshop, Ecce Homo

Guido Reni (Bologna 1575 - 1642) workshop
Ecce Homo

oil on canvas
62 x 50 cm. - in frame 81 x 68 cm.

Provenance:
Robert Napier Collection (Shandon, Dunbartonshire)
Christie's, London, 13 April 1877, lot 384 (as Guido Reni)
Conti Annesley Collection (Castlewellan/County of Down)
Christie's, South Kensington, 28 April 2010, lot 66

Imkinsky Auction (Vienna), 12. April 2016, lot 95, URL: https://imkinsky.com/ergebnisse/111/529/5/58528

The proposed work, depicting the intense image of Christ crowned with thorns, picks up on the iconography of Ecce homo conceived by Guido Reni, one of his most moving compositions, a subject much celebrated in the artist's career as testimony to the enormous success he achieved.

In our case, the figure of Christ is shown half-length against a light background, wearing the crown of thorns, a symbol of royalty bestowed on him by the soldiers to mock him during his imprisonment. By concentrating on the face, with the mouth slightly open and the eyes turned upwards, Reni was able to create a prototype of this composition that is still well-known today, and was later replicated by his workshop in numerous variants, with slight differences from one another.

The closest iconographic parallels can be found with Ecce Homo in the Louvre Museum (image 1, URL: https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010060765), or with the same paintings in the Galleria Corsini in Rome or the Detroit Institute of Art (image 2, URL: https://dia.org/collection/head-christ-crowned-thorns-58268).

In the canvas one can see the author's ability to show not only the physical, but also the psychological description of Christ who, looking upwards, appears physically and emotionally exhausted and suffering. Nevertheless, his image is touched by an indescribable grace, facilitated by the refinement of the palette and a soft, enveloping luminosity.

With regard to our version, it is a work realised with an excellent painterly precision, with an extraordinary expressive power, such that it can be easily compared to the earlier Rhinelanders. We can therefore deduce that the author is one of the artists gravitating around Reni's entourage, or one of his followers, presumably a pupil, active at a time immediately afterwards.

Guido Reni's first biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616-1693), noted that the artist ran one of the largest and most productive workshops in Europe in order to fulfil the large number of commissions. According to tradition, Reni employed sixty students in Rome and, after returning to Bologna in the 1620s, his workshop could boast over eighty students. Due to this historical background, it is still difficult today to clearly distinguish between the paintings the master worked on and the good copies made by his pupils or assistants.

The conservation condition of the work is good, the pictorial layer does not show any kind of problem, with small scattered retouches, appropriate for the period.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Thr work is sold complete with a nice gilded frame and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and descriptive iconographic card.

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