Illuminating the Baroque: Reni, Guercino, and the Roman Imagery of Aurora.
Baroque Rome never ceases to amaze, some of its treasures are well hidden within some of the private residences of the Ludovisi and Pallavicini princely families, splendid frescoes that evoke the glory of a new Rome. In 17th century Rome, the mythological iconography of the Aurora, the goddess of dawn, captivated the imagination of many artists and their patrons. She arrives at dawn, cyclically, in a rhythmic, cosmic process, rich with allegorical meaning. Roman art at this time was shaped by a dialogue between that late-Renaissance classical revival and the spiritual propaganda of the Counter-Reformation, which despite some common narratives, never impacted the cultural scene in the Eternal City, in which the humanistic ethos of the Renaissance continued to flourish. The Aurora became ideal as iconographical subject. Among the greatest examples of this are Guido Reni’s at the Casino Pallavicini-Rospigliosi and Guercino’s at the Casino di Villa Boncompagni-Ludovisi. The two Emiliani’s language is deeply contrasting, both seem to reveal their true genius through powerfully, ideally beautiful and yet delicate restraint, showing the breadth and ambition of the Roman Baroque, a beauty of polished white travertine and restrained fresco, rather than the over-the-top extravaganza of Spain or the southern-Germanic sphere.
Aurora means light and its serene luminosity is the intended effect. Reni’s color palette is quite cool but balanced, suffused with delicate highlights, evoking that early light at sunrise without requiring any theatrical effects. At this time, Baroque art in Rome was associated with the great chiaroscuro, Caravaggio’s strong shadows, the emotional instability that Reni’s defies in his harmony, grace and an ideal beauty that finds its origins in Athens and Rome through the eyes of the Classical Revival of the Renaissance, most specifically, we see echoes of a certain Raphael.
However, the restraint does betray its political resonance. Scipione Borghese, nephew to Pope Paul V, was at the time Rome’s greatest art patron, he believed that the Aurora offered a great allegory of rebirth and renewal. By aligning the iconographical scheme of the villa with the cosmic cycle of dawn, he weaponized his philanthropy towards a new dawn for the arts, a new illuminated era, not just metaphorically, this was a new Renaissance, yet another sign that betrays a certain narrative of the Counter-Reformation in Rome, through the favor of his family’s own papacy. Reni’s Aurora was a decorative triumph for both the Borghese and Rome itself as a new uninterrupted journey of revival continued, that journey that began with Martin V Colonna bringing the Renaissance to Rome.
A decade later, the same theme emerges once again at the Casino dell’Aurora in the vast Villa Boncompagni-Ludovisi. Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi commissioned this dramatic work once his uncle Pope Gregory XV was elected. This work is very much in contrast with Reni’s idealistic work, this is truly a work of the later, dramatic Roman Baroque in all of its opulent decadence, where the classical inhabits an ethereally bucolic space that transcends that perfection the Eternal City had known in the ages past. While Reni’s is calm, serene, much like a Greek frieze, Guercino’s is a triumph of celestial, dramatic energy. Aurora hurtles across the heavens in a theatrical motion, scattering roses.
Beneath her is the anthropomorphic personification of the Night who withdraws dramatically as her draperies flutter as she flees from Aurora’s light. Apollo’s chariot breaches through Guercino’s trademark deep blue sky, framed by the painted architecture that puts the Casino in a direct dialogue with the fresco, an open window into the Aurora, the villa itself featuring in the background. The colors are vibrant, the tension is real, this is a but the blinking of an eye, Guercino’s mastery of the chiaroscuro technique and his ability to animate his subjects with a visceral sense of movement. This is Baroque theater, it plays with the viewer’s perception, the illusion is that the Casino itself is at the center of this dramatic, cosmic chaos!
The dynamism we see is not merely aesthetic, but it also serves a political function, Aurora is casting out the darkness of night, much like the Ludovisi papacy saw itself as a source of renewed enlightenment for the Church and Rome. It was once again through the soft power of the arts that the Ludovisi tried to glorify this relatively brief pontificate. Guercino’s Aurora is a fitting testament, asserting this new dawn, as well as the cardinal’s own good taste. Every respectable Roman family had such a cardinal!
The splendid dialogue between Reni’s serene classicism and Guercino’s dramatic dynamism rooted in the naturalistic illusionism of the Roman Baroque speaks of a voracious cultural, classical, appetite of a Baroque Rome that was still voracious for both antiquity and Renaissance alike. Aurora is an allegorical framework that can be used to convey many a message, rooted in that revival of antiquity and visual experimentation that defined the Roman 1600s.
This was also the time of the Counter-Reformation, but Rome was comfortable in its way, there was no fear strong enough to repeal that classical revival, despite what some secular or reformed scholars might argue. Aurora was a symbol of renewal, virtue, the triumph of order over chaos, over the fanaticism and prudery of the north. Hence, she became an appealing theme for the great philanthropists of the Eternal City who were seeking a sense of continuity with the glorious past of antiquity, a legacy written in mythological language. This fruitful environment allowed artists to explore motion, light, space, defining the very chore of Baroque aesthetics.
In the Eternal City, art was spectacle but also a very powerful political instrument, Rome was no more a vast empire, but the cradle of soft power, art was its subtlest and most powerful weapon. Power in Italy found its strength in beauty and not in military might. Aurora embodies that very spirit with its radiant, perpetually transforming and dynamic nature. With the contrasting dialogue between Reni and Guercino, we have a great insight into the varied nature of the Roman Baroque, in which mythology, artistic innovation and princely ambition found its response in this frenetic harmony that gave rise to the very last great dawn of our Eternal City. Aurora is Rome’s last ode to its classical past embedded in its walls and thus making this our city truly eternal.
