Guercino - the painter's craft

The exhibition aims to trace Guercino’s activity and art from his training to his full maturity, thanks to first-rate masterpieces, some reunited for the first time, while recounting the significance of the painter’s craft during the 17th century.

The challenges of the profession, production systems, workshop organization, market and commissioning dynamics, and the most popular subjects and topics.

Beginning with the significant nucleus of paintings and drawings belonging to the collections of the Galleria Sabauda and the Royal Library by the “monster of nature” that was Guercino, as Ludovico Carracci called him, more than one hundred works by the Emilian master and coeval artists will be on display.

great draughtsman and felicitous colorist: he is a monster of nature and a miracle to amaze those who see his works. I say nothing: he makes the first painters remain stupid.

On the roll call are Carracci, Guido Reni, and Domenichino-from more than 30 major museums and collections, including the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Monastery of San Lorenzo in El Escorial-to bring to life a grand fresco of the art system of the time.

The seventeenth century takes to the extreme the taste for the depiction of the affections, the heated gestures, the close and engaging vision of events, and Guercino is a true master in this, both in the rendering of figures and in painting the richly detailed scenic apparatus.

Curators Annamaria Bava of the Royal Museums and by Gelsomina Spione of the University of Turin:

“Guercino masterfully stages the last act of tragedy, making the spectator participate and transporting him into the sublime emotion of the baroque spectacle.”

The exhibition is produced together with CoopCulture with Villaggio Globale International scheduled from March 23 through July 28, 2024 in the Royal Museums’ Chiablese Rooms.