Painting by Guido Reni believed missing returns to Borghese Gallery

Guido Reni’s Country Dance is back in the collection of the Borghese Gallery.

The painting had appeared on the antiquarian market in 2008 in London with attribution to an anonymous artist from Bologna; after initial attributional hypotheses, its authorship was recognized as being by Guido Reni, thanks in part to the identification of the work in the inventories and descriptions of Scipione Borghese’s collection. The Country Dance was exhibited in March 2020 at TEFAF by the Fondantico Gallery, and now the work has been purchased by the Galleria Borghese, thus reacquiring the painting that was thought to be lost.

The scene depicts a country festival: a ball, accompanied by the music of a lute and viola da braccio, attended by a group of peasants and attended by some local ladies and gentlemen. The characters appear seated in a circle, in a clearing among the trees beside which runs a stream. In the center, a young villager invites a lady to open the dances. We then see a wide variety of attitudes of the characters: a bored lady turns to her neighbor, two women care for a child, the lute player interrupts to take one of the flasks placed to refresh on the bank. Castles, farmhouses, and a small church enrich the hilly landscape. A detail of the painting is peculiar: two flies that have settled on the surface of the canvas.

The documented provenance of this painting from the collection of Scipione Borghese and its discovery give occasion to specify the fundamental importance of the Borghese commission for Guido Reni. The cardinal wished to make Reni his court painter. To him Pope Paul V entrusted the frescoes of the Pauline Chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore and one of his greatest masterpieces, the Aurora in the casino now Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, when the latter was Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s first building enterprise and residence.

The painter devoted himself to the landscape theme in the early years of his Roman sojourn. The Bolognese culture of the Carraccis and in particular Annibale and the echoes of Nicolò dell’Abate’s landscapes are still behind the construction of a painting like the Country Dance, dating from 1601-02. This important landscape work thus contributes to the integration of the artistic path and the different areas of research experimented by the Bolognese artist.

Pictured: Guido Reni, Country Dance (c. 1601-1602; oil on canvas, 81 x 99 cm; Rome, Galleria Borghese)

Painting by Guido Reni believed missing returns to Borghese Gallery

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