Friday, November 4, 2016

Robert Browning's Sonnet for Guercino

Guercino
Guardian Angel
1641
oil on canvas
Museo Civico, Fano

Robert Browning, living with Elizabeth Barrett in Italy, wrote the heartfelt but preposterous sonnet below in 1848 to mark the couple's encounter with the painting by Guercino that is reproduced above.

We were at Fano, and three times we went
   To sit and see him in his chapel there,
And drink his beauty to our soul's content
    My angel with me too: and since I care
For dear Guercino's fame (to which in power
And glory comes this picture for a dower,
Fraught with a pathos so magnificent)

And since he did not work thus earnestly
   At all times, and has else endured some wrong 
I took one thought his picture struck from me,
  And spread it out, translating it to song.

Guercino
St Jerome in the Desert
1641
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Rimini

Guercino
Mars with Cupid
1649
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum

Guercino
Atlas
oil on canvas
1646
Museo Bardini, Florence

Guercino
Hersilia separating Romulus and Tatius
1645
oil on canvas
Louvre

Guercino
Christ appearing to St Teresa
1634
oil on canvas
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Guercino
St Romuald
1642
oil on canavs
Pinacoteca Comunale di Ravenna

Guercino
St Marguerite
1644
canvas
San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

Guercino
Penitent Magdalene
1649
oil on canvas
private collection

Guercino
Cleopatra and Octavian
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Guercino
Death of Cleopatra
1648
oil on canvas
Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa

Guercino
Salome receiving the head of St John the Baptist
1637
canvas
Musée des beaux arts de Rennes

Guercino
The Persian Sibyl
1647-48
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Guercino
Allegory of painting and sculpture
1637
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Guercino
Disegno and Colore
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden