Carlo Cesare Malvasia. Felsina pittrice. Life of Guido Reni. Part Three

English Version

Carlo Cesare Malvasia
Felsina pittrice
Lives of the Bolognese Painters

Volume 9
Life of Guido Reni 

Guido Reni, Aurora, 1612-1614, Rome, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi
Source: The Yorck Project tramite Wikimedia Commons

Critical Edition, Translation, and Essay by Lorenzo Pericolo, Historical Notes by Lorenzo Pericolo with Elizabeth Cropper, Stefan Albl, Mattia Biffis, and Elise Ferone

Corpus of Illustrations Established by Lorenzo Pericolo, with Mattia Biffis and Elise Ferone

Published for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
2 tomes, Turnhout, Harvey Miller. An imprint of Brepols Publishers, 2019

Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro. Part Three

Go Back to Part One

The role of the market in the Life of Guido Reni

In all honesty, I don't remember any text chronologically preceding the Felsina, and specifically Guido Reni's Life, in which market and money played such an important role. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about the Bolognese artist is his proverbial ludopathy. But reducing all to this aspect is an understatement. What I would like to emphasize is that Malvasia provided a series of elements that give an idea of the importance of the market of the time, starting with a little-known episode: when Guido escaped from Rome (for Malvasia in 1611, actually in 1612), he decided to abandon his artistic activity and become an art dealer: “It was then that Guido spread the rumor that he had quit being a painter, that he wished to paint only at whim and for himself, and that he would rather apply himself to the market and traffic in old paintings and drawings. He had observed how unceasingly they changed hands, from one dilettante to another, each resale generating a profit, until they ended up in the cabinets and galleries not only of Rome, but also of France, Holland, and England, yielding exorbitant gains for the same traffickers, such as Mastri, Manzini, or Grati, who kept enriching themselves (…). He was then committed entirely to collecting distinguished paintings, not excluding those by Caravaggio, which were particularly sought after at the time, and those by old masters that he had brought from Rome. Introduced  by the Counts Manzoli of San Pietro to a dilettante, a certain Cartari, who was as successful as he was knowledgeable in this regard, Guido purchased for the then sizable price of two thousand scudi the many paintings he then had on display, completely filling his ground floor" (see I, p. 53). The narration tends to highlight Reni's frustration and a more general reflection on the status of the artist; it is not the art creator, or the author of the creative act, who sees his creative abilities fully recognized through the realization of an adequate profit, but the merchant who reaps the higher profits from collecting through a more or less systematic work of speculation. Naturally Reni (in the specific case through the intervention of Calvaert, who reminded him that his would have been cowardice) soon withdrew from his intentions and resumed painting (provided he ever stopped). Two things, however, must be highlighted. First, the artist's frustration justified his subsequent behaviours, aimed at maximizing the prices of his works; such behaviours were dictated not so much by the wish to get richer, but by that of seeing the artist's social importance recognized. Second, for the first time, not so much and not only the outright sale of the paintings, but the resale of the same, i.e. a market structured in a complex way, broke into an artistic biography. 

Guido Reni, Assumption of the Virgin, 1616-1617, Genua, Chiesa del Gesù
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Assunzione_-_Guido_Reni_(Genova).jpg?uselang=it

Artists and money in the fourth age of painting

The foreword to Guido's Life ended with a somewhat complex, and still highly significant sentence: “Father and promoter of the modern, he made the entire world fall in love with it, art lovers desire it, and artists prosper from it. As will easily appear from relating his life, thanks to Guido priceless paintings, like the panels of ancient Greece, have now become familiar and affordable despite the most obdurate avarice, to the envy of the nobler professions but, in the end, to the honor and incomparable glory of painting” (Vol. I, p. 15 and 17). The fourth age of painting was the one which, thanks to Guido, allowed painters to return to the prestige they enjoyed in ancient Greek times, with great envy on the part of all the other noble professions. The commercial fortune of Reni, therefore, was an integral element of the new modern way.

Of course, not all suspicions and preconceptions about the market were missing: thus, Malvasia made a series of statements, which can be perfectly explained in the context of the time. First of all, he reaffirmed the belief that perfection is priceless and that no type of monetary remuneration can compensate the skill of those who create art. Furthermore, Guido hardly ever dealt with commercial negotiations, because doing so was not suiting those who dealt with artistic creation: “In negotiations over his works he always employed agents or intimate friends, who would obtain paintings from him as if by favor, and only with difficulty would he lower himself to work out an agreement in person, since he detested the term "price" used in this profession, which he said ought to be negotiated using the term "honorarium" and "gift" ” (v. I, p. 147). It is therefore not correct to speak of 'sale', but rather of an exchange of gifts between the artist and the client. And this explains, therefore, why the Bolognese historian systematically mentioned the gifts (in particular the gold chains) that the artist received from the buyers of his paintings. It was, moreover, a recognition which Malvasia himself also aspired to obtain. In fact, when he wrote his Felsina, the scholar dedicated it to Louis XIV and received in exchange, as recognition (after a first shipment not arrived at its destination), the famous “Jewel of the Sun King”, which the historian defined in his testament his most precious asset.

All this being said, it is barely evident that under the curtain (and the rhetoric) of the 'gift', the prosaic aspect of the price of the paintings counted and how much, and Malvasia addressed the issue on countless occasions, also making use (limited to the period 1609-1612) of the artist's Book of Accounts (today at the Pierpoint Morgan Library in New York), given to him - he wrote it - by Giovanni Andrea Sirani (it is very likely that the specimen preserved in America was the one passed into the hands of Carlo Cesare, but it has not come intact to the present day). Therefore, some characteristic elements emerge, the main of which is that, by adopting a system that will then be followed by many others (think of Guercino and his accounting register), Guido obtained payments by pricing the number of figures (or half figures) in a painting. Thus we are witnessing a surge in quotations that over the years reached up to one hundred scudi for full-figures and then rapidly increased to two hundred.

One further point, moreover, needs to be clarified: the manifold information provided by Malvasia on the transactions (even after Guido's death) was not simple gossip; indeed, quoting the price quotations of the paintings were an integral part of the way in which Malvasia wrote a biography, together with many other elements (for example, mentioning letters and poems).

Guido Reni, Adoration of the Magi, 1638-1642, Cleveland Museum of Art
Source: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1969.132

Fascinating the audience

Thanks to the new modern manner, Guido Reni is the artist who raised the price level. Ultimately, this may only happen if demand largely exceeds supply (and it is no coincidence that Reni's pictures had an incalculable number of more or less declared copies). The first issue is: why did Guido's manner make the public so eager to own his works and to spend any sum to get them? One of the answers Lorenzo Pericolo provides is the novelty. Let's go back to an aspect that we have mentioned extensively above, and which however was particularly dear to the Bolognese historian: “Malvasia ideintifies novelty as a "great force", perhaps the greatest, of history; if Guido's paintings fill patrons' hearts and minds with love and desire, this is because Guido forged a new style specifically intended to "make a big splash", on par with Caravaggio's dark manner (...). His divine style elegantly and radically unsettles viewers by ravishing them to ecstasy, to the point that reason dissolves into contemplation and the senses are outshined by the vision of the supernatural: of forms of beauty never before seen” (Vol. II, p. 94). Ultimately, this emotional tension reaching an ecstatic state justified both the viewers’ desire to possess the pictures and their price surges. The increase of the quotations was documented above all because it marked the success of a style. At the same time, success also acted as a motivating factor for the artist and, without a doubt, led him to suffer the pressure of customer expectations: “This is why, in his final years, he could never let his paintings go and, mocked sometimes for this inability to rest content, he replied that he was obliged to do even more than he knew and could do, if possible, since he was paid much more than any other painter before him” (Vol. I, 166). In front of his incomplete paintings, the elder Guido was an almost paralyzed man: he could no longer understand how to go even further, how to further raise the bar and increase the appeal of his works towards the public.

Guido Reni, Portrait of a girl with a crown, 1648-1642, Rome, Musei Capitolini
Source: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/UAHQ9yPGQpjdGg

The gambler

Of course, the judgment on Guido the gambler, on the man who, at the end of every workday, squandered fortune playing cards can only be negative. If Reni was a model for his ability to 'make money', it is equally true that he had to be censored for the ease with which he dissipated it. The issue is not so straightforward, and it must be said that, in many respects, the Guido who throws away his earned work can almost be portrayed like a character to have human sympathy for. Basically he was a man who did not hold wealth in any consideration; it is no coincidence that, in this regard, Malvasia cited Rubens. The scholar's thesis is that, if Guido had correctly managed his earnings, he could have enjoyed a similarly affluent lifestyle to the notoriously sumptuous existence of the Flemish painter. Instead the artist (who, once his mother died, did not have close relatives) seems to hold any form of accumulation or investment in contempt: he did not purchase land, he did not buy buildings, and he did not try to put his money to use. Undoubtedly, this was a choice with a potential charm, which however had the great demerit of being financed only with debts, inducing him to work by the hour to be able to pay them. He also had to resort to a serial production (albeit superior to that of many other colleagues) which degraded the social role of the painter. The problem is all here: accumulating money means giving dignity to the role of painting; therefore the artist must have the courage to 'get his hands dirty' for the good name of his category. If on artist proves instead that he does not have money in any consideration, he throws, instead, mud on the nobility of art.