Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his
Self portrait, c. 1635
The dramatic confrontation with mortality depicted in Guercino's Et in Arcadia ego (c. 1618–1622) marks the first known usage of this Latin motto (inscribed on the plinth beneath the skull).
This contemporary portrait (1623) by Ottavio Leoni highlights the lifelong squint (a form of strabismus) which prompted the name 'Guercino'.
L'Aurora is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house, adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. The work is considered Reni's fresco