252 SKETCHES OF THE OLD MASTERS. 



of St. Peter with his head downwards, which is in the Vatican, 

 is called one of the best of his oil paintings. The fresco of 

 Aurora strewing flowers before the chariot of the sun, is much 

 the finest ceiling work of this master. The aim which Guido 

 set before himself in early life, was to rescue and elevate art 

 from the decline into which it had fallen under Caravaggio and 

 the Naturalistic School, by which is meant the selection of sub- 

 jects from common life, or as it has been called, " The Poetry of 

 the Repulsive." Guido, on the contrary, brought into his repre- 

 sentations the highest order of grace and beauty. But it was a 

 standard drawn entirely from his own ideals. As he said of his 

 St. Michael, "it was in vain for me to search for his resemblance 

 here below ; so that I was forced to make an introspection into 

 my own mind and into the idea of beauty which I have formed 

 in my own imagination." Therefore, as a very natural conse- 

 quence, all his personages are in a great measure repetitions of 

 the same ideal. Whether it be a St. John, or Niobe, or Paris, or 

 Christ, or Cleopatra, there is the same general resemblance. 

 Guido Reni must have been at one time in receipt of a princely 

 income from his works ; but all great men have their failings, 

 and singularly enough that of this man was gambling. He was 

 reduced to such distresses for money to feed his ruling passion 

 that he used to sell his time by the hour for the manufacture of 

 Madonnas, and of pictures unworthy of his genius. Poverty 

 and debt at last brought on the fever of which he died. 



Albani. FRANCISCO ALBANI, son of a silk merchant, was born 

 at Bologna in 1578, and died at the same place in 1660. He was 

 a fellow pupil and friend of Guido Reni, whom he followed to 

 Rome. There in the Borghese Palace are his most famous 

 pictures, "The Four Seasons"- landscapes with mythological 

 accessories. His excellence was in mythological and fanciful 

 subjects. Lanzi thus compares Albani as a painter, to Anacreon 

 as a poet. "Like that poet with his short odes, so Albani with 

 his small pictures acquired great reputation, and as the one sings 

 of Yenus and the Loves, and maids and boys, so does the artist 

 hold up to the eye the same delicate and graceful subjects." His 

 pictures would seem to be but the repetition of his home life ; a 



