GUIDO RENI (BOLOGNA 1575-BOLOGNA 1642)
The head of Christ
1620RCIN 905283
In 1620 Guido Reni provided his assistant Francesco Gessi with designs, including this sheet, for a painting of Christ the Saviour as the high altarpiece of Santissimo Salvatore, Bologna. The seventeenth-century biographer Malvasia recounted that Reni subsequently found out that his assistant had been slandering him, and so refused to pay Gessi for the work.