Illuminating the Baroque: Reni, Guercino, and the Roman Imagery of Aurora.
Among my favorite and yet most secretive treasure of Baroques Rome are the beautiful depictions of the Aurora in the private residences of the Ludovisi and Pallavicini princely families, the splendid frescoes evoke the glory of a new Rome. In seventeenth-century Rome, very few mythological figures captivated the imagination of artists and their patrons as vividly as the Aurora, the goddess of dawn. Her arrival at daybreak, a cyclical and cosmic event, so symbolically rich, provided a narrative that could be rendered in sweeping celestial motion, radiant color and complex allegorical meaning. In an era when Roman art was shaped by dialogue between the post-Renaissance classical revival and an increasing Counter-Reformation spiritual propaganda, the humanistic ethos of the previous century was still strong and thriving in the Eternal City. Aurora became an ideal iconographical subject. The two grandest examples are certainly Guido Reni’s at the Casino Pallavicini-Rospigliosi and Guercino...
