Francesco Guarino Biography
Guarini Francesco (Solofra, 19 January 1611 - Gravina in Puglia, 23 November 1651) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. The life of Francesco Guarini, commonly known as Ciccio Guarino, was short and industrious, the first knowledge of the art he learned came from his father Giantommaso, as evidenced by the four-handed work of the parish of Sant'Andrea Apostolo, the Madonna del Rosario ( 1634). The painting is characterized by a traditional iconography of the Virgin and Child and saints animated by late sixteenth-century gestures, but at the same time shows stylistic characteristics, those of Francesco, close to the Caravaggism of Filippo Vitale and the older works of Massimo Stanzione. On 25 February 1636 Giovan Tommaso, now close to death, emancipated his son Francesco with a legal document, giving him responsibility for the workshop; in the same year, on March 3, the twenty-five-year-old painter signed the contract for the creation of twenty-one canvases for the ceiling of the transept of the Collegiate Church of Solofra, where his father had already created some canvases for the decoration of the ceiling of the central nave, with scenes of the Old Testament. With this commission Francesco Guarini can be counted among the main Neapolitan painters of the second generation of the seventeenth century. Francesco's autographed parts are of such high quality that they represent a clear break with the "devoted" decorator methods of his father Giovan Tommaso. Throughout the group of early works from the Collegiata, Guarini expresses an impassive Caravaggism, in which the narrative function is entrusted to the lights and still life details. Around 1642-1643 the artist worked for the church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Campobasso: for the altar of the saint of the same name nine small stories around a sixteenth-century statue of the saint, on the altar dedicated to San Benedetto the latter who exorcises a possessed friar and a Pietà as a coping. The carving of the wooden parts of the two altars, despite the depletion suffered, seems stylistically close to the late sixteenth-century methods of Solofra carving. Therefore it is not excluded that Guarini provided his Molise clients with a complete service, making use of his father's workshop for the plastic parts. Guarini then established client relationships with the Orsini family, at the time feudal lords over the territories of Solofra. For the Orsini family he created the Madonna del Rosario (1644-49) for the convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Solofra. According to what Bernardo De Dominici recalls, Guarini then moved to Gravina di Puglia, the center of the economic power of the southern branch of the ancient Orsini family. In Gravina, Guarini continued a flourishing work activity for the Orsini family and the various churches in the area, becoming a decisive figure for seventeenth-century painting in those territories. In addition to portraits and sacred scenes for the Orsini family, he painted the altarpiece entitled the Madonna del Suffraggio (circa 1649), for the family church of Santa Maria del Suffraggio. The compositional structure of the Madonna and Child group is taken from the Madonna delle Anime Purganti by Massimo Stanzione in Naples, for the church of Santa Maria delle Anime del Purgatorio in Arco. Guarini created, in a more articulated way than Stanzione's prototype, the complex maneuver of the angels who lift the souls of purgatory towards the sky and the angel from behind who raises the powerful male nude partially in shadow. This work represents one of the most powerful expressions of Guarini's mature art. Precisely at the moment in which the first steps of the ecclesiastical career of Pier Francesco Orsini, future Pope Benedict XIII, could have opened other doors to Guarini's creativity, providing him with various commissions, he dies. The cause of death is told by De Dominci in the Lives: Francesco Guarini was in love with a young married woman; when she was killed by her dishonored husband, the painter abandoned himself, dying in November 1651. This is one of the hypotheses; it is also probable that the artist's death was caused by an accident or a sudden illness. His death left the Orsini in deepest grief and they reserved a sumptuous funeral for him. A pupil of Francesco Guarini was Angelo Solimena, father of Francesco Solimena.
