Giovanni francesco barbieri biography template

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, nicknamed “Guercino” [he had a bad eye, and Guercino means “squinter” in Italian], was born in Cento a small village in Emilia in 1591.

After having worked in the atelier of a “gouache painter” in his native town, sometime around 1600 he moved to Bologna to work with the perspective wall painter Paolo Zagnoni.

Giovanni francesco barbieri biography template

In 1607 Guercino returned to Cento to work with Benedetto Gennari. Presumably, after just one year as an assistant, he was actively assisting Gennari on various projects. The canon Antonio Mirandola was attracted by the young Guercino’s paintings and became his sponsor and procured him some commissions such as the Triumph of All Saints for the church of Santo Spirito in Cento (1613).

The following year, still in the same town, he frescoed a room in the home of Alberto Provenzale and then he decorated the Pannini residence. In 1616 Guercino founded the first “Academy of the Nude” in Cento, where he taught dra