Guido Cagnacci
1601-1681
Guido Cagnacci was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period, belonging to the Bolognese School. Cagnacci was an interesting Emilian painter of the mid-seventeenth century. Like many others from his region, he was actively involved in rediscovering classical Antiquity. He also holds a special place in the history of art because he moved to Vienna and so exported the latest classical style to the German-speaking world.
Cagnacci was born in Santarcangelo di Romagna near Rimini. He worked in Rimini from 1627 to 1642. He had been in Rome, in contact with Guercino and Simon Vouet. He may have had an apprenticeship with the elderly Ludovico Carracci. He had been Guido Reni’s pupil and tended to combine references to classical models and to Raphael’s work with his own lively interest in the type of daring perspectives and brilliant compositions that the new Baroque style favored. We can see this phase of his work in the huge canvases in Forli cathedral painted early in his career.
He is known late in life for sensuous representations of naked women from thigh upwards, including Lucretia, Cleopatra, and Mary Magdalene. This allies him to a strand of courtly painting, epitomized in Florence by Francesco Furini, Simone Pignoni and others.
In 1650, he moved to Venice. It added more colour to his palette and opened up the range of the subjects he handled to include sensual scenes with seductive half-naked young girls. This type of composition was much sought-after by collectors and opened up international avenues. In 1658, he traveled to Vienna, where he remained under patronage of the emperor Leopold I. That put the seal of success on his painting.
Cagnacci’s work was, in one view, “entirely unappreciated by his contemporaries,” but reassessed by modern critics; his painting is “warm with the heightened tones of grazing light, rich in the play of shadows and colors.”
