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’s at the Casino di Villa Boncompagni-Ludovisi, the two Emiliani artists’ expression are in contrast with each other, and their styles and iconographies reveal the true genius, breadth and ambition of the Roman Baroque, a refined Baroque of polished white travertine and restrained fresco, rather than the over-the-top extravaganza of both Spain and the southern-Germanic sphere.
Aurora is light and the intended effect is one of serene luminosity. Reni’s color palette is cool, balanced and suffused with soft highlights, it does evoke that first light at dawn without resorting to theatrical contrast. This was a moment in which Baroque art was associated with intense shadow, emotional turbulence, but Reni’s Aurora stands as a declaration of harmony, grace and that ideal beauty that goes back to Athens and Rome through the eyes of the Classical revival of the Renaissance.
However, this classical restraint does not diminish its political resonance. Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, one of Rome’s greatest patrons of the arts, believed the theme of the Aurora offered a potent allegory of renewal. By aligning his villa with the cosmic cycle of dawn, he directed his philanthropy towards a new dawn for the arts, an illuminated era, both literally and metaphorically, through the favor of his family’s papacy. Reni’s Aurora served not only as a decorative triumph but also as a carefully drafted visual metaphor for the Borghese grandeur which truly opened a new phase of that Classical revival begun with the Renaissance and which made Rome great, again.
A decade later, the theme of the Aurora reemerged dramatically at the Casino dell’Aurora on the grounds of the immense Villa Boncompagni-Ludovisi. This was commissioned by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi shortly after the election of his uncle, Pope Gregory XV. This fresco is in stark contract with Reni’s classicizing version, this is truly a later Roman Baroque sign of opulent decadence in which the classical inhabits an ethereal, bucolic space that transcendent the perfection the city had known until then. While Reni’s is calm, serene, frieze-like, truly academic; Guercino’s is a burst of celestial, yet dramatic, energy. Aurora hurtles across the sky in a sweeping diagonal and unexpected motion, scattering roses that trail in an arc of glowing color.
Beneath her is the anthropomorphic personification of the Night who recoils dramatically, her dark draperies are thrown into turmoil as she flees from the approaching light. Apollo’s chariot, rendered with bold foreshortening, seems to hurtle out of the illusionistic deep blue sky, a Guercino’s trademark, breaking through the painted architecture framing the scene. The composition is suffused with vibrant color and rhythmic tension, demonstrating Guercino’s mastery of the chiaroscuro and his innate ability to animate mythological subjects with his visceral sense of movement. The scene takes place in an ideal rendition of the Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi in which the Casino features iconically in the background.
Unlike Reni’s harmonious procession, Guercino’s Aurora truly embodies that full theatricality of the Baroque idiom. The fresco plays with the viewer’s perception, creating an illusionistic opening to the heavens that transforms the small casino into a site of complete cosmic drama and chaos!
The dialogue between the two frescoes, with Reni’s serene classicism and Guercino’s dynamic but more naturalistic illusionism speaks of the broader cultural appetite for Aurora in early Baroque Rome. That goddess of dawn that offers an allegorical framework that can be adapted to many artistic languages, while remaining anchored in that Italian revival of antiquity and the exuberant visual experimentation that defined this period.
While this was a period of Counter-Reformation, Rome was confidently established in its ways; it had no unfounded fears that were strong enough to repeal the Classical revival which prospered in its aristocracy. It never found the destructive passion of its northern European nemesis, far too afraid of perhaps a much stronger threat. Aurora became a symbol of renewal, virtue, the triumph of order over chaos that made her an appealing subject for the great patrons of the Eternal City, seeking a continuation with the city’s glorious classical past, a legacy inscribed in mythological terms. A celestial setting that allowed artists to explore light, space and motion, the very heart of Baroque aesthetics.
Art was both spectacle and a political instrument in Rome, the Eternal City, no more a vast empire, was the cradle of soft power and art was its subtlest but most powerful weapon. Aurora embodied the very spirit of this with its radiant, transformative and perpetually in motion nature. Through the contrasting dialogue between Guido Reni and Guercino, we have an insight into the multifaceted nature of the Roman Baroque, in which mythology, artistic innovation, and aristocratic ambition converge in dazzling harmony to give rise to the last great dawn of the Eternal City. The Aurora embodies the last song of Rome’s classical soul, and as the music became embedded in the its historic walls through paint, so did this city become truly eternal.
