13 Facts About Giovanni Baglione

Giovanni Baglione was born and died in Rome, but from his own account came from a noble family of Perugia.

Giovanni Baglione's paintings have been described by the art historian Steven F Ostrow as "extraordinarily uneven, at best, competent, and his work pales in comparison with that of many of the contemporary artists he emulated", while his "chalk and pen and ink drawings reveal a force and lyricism rarely found in his paintings".

Giovanni Baglione had a successful career, receiving a Papal knighthood in the Supreme Order of Christ in 1606, and his long involvement with Rome's Accademia di San Luca and his biographies reveal "an artist obsessed with status".

Giovanni Baglione was a member of the Accademia from 1593 until his death, and three times President.

Giovanni Baglione's first book was an artistic guide to Rome's nine major pilgrimage churches, which is notable for its period in taking an interest in the works of all periods, and remains useful to scholars as an account of these churches at a point before many subsequent alterations.

Giovanni Baglione's biographies cover over two hundred artists in various media, all of whom had worked in Rome and were dead by the time he published.

Giovanni Baglione had known a large number of his subjects personally and his attributions and basic factual information is considered generally reliable, although like Vasari and most intervening biographers of artists, he sometimes repeats anecdotes uncritically.

Giovanni Baglione's best known painting, Sacred Love and Profane Love, was a direct response to Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia.

Giovanni Baglione was greatly influenced by the style of Caravaggio during this period of his career, and the younger artist and his circle had claimed, with some justification, that Giovanni Baglione had plagiarized his style.

Giovanni Baglione had recently completed his large altarpiece of the Resurrection of Jesus for Il Gesu, the main church of the Jesuit Order, and claimed that Caravaggio was jealous of this important commission.

Years after Caravaggio's early death in 1610, Giovanni Baglione was his first biographer, and though he gave him much praise for his early works, his dislike is evident, concentrated on the younger artist's life and character and his later paintings; this verdict, especially as regards the man, has remained highly influential.

Giovanni Baglione was mainly a painter of religious subjects, reflecting the Roman market, but painted several mythological subjects, including an "astonishing" Venus whipped by Love with an unusually suggestive pose, accentuated by strong chiaroscuro, for the plump goddess, who is viewed foreshortened from behind as she lies on a bed.

Giovanni Baglione was employed in many of the considerable numbers of church commissions in Rome during the pontificates of Clement VIII, Paul V and Urban VIII in the early years of the new century, from which the Caravaggisti were largely excluded.