I would like you to do me the favour of sending me one of those young men, and to do so as soon as possible, and in case you do not have any mounts, I will write to Giovanni Battista to find one
to publicly endorse the identification can be explained as a desire on his part to avoid a direct participation in a case that had become so divisive and quarrelsome.35 Another indication of his personal involvement is that, upon hearing of Casali’s return, Guido had sent 25 scudi to Rome, in order to help him to pay for his trip back to Bologna, a donation that was taken as a key evidence of the artist’s own belief about the claimant’s identity.36 Such a gift also marks a typical tract of Guido’s liberality that is underlined by his biographers. Carlo Cesare Malvasia stressed that Guido was always willing to assist indigent people, providing poor unmarried women with dowries, sponsoring children at baptism, and sustaining people in need with charitable donations, ‘which he was not able to keep secret, for it was known to everybody, the amount being calculated on the basis of the religious men and other third parties whom he employed (so as not to be found out) to deliver money’.37 Guido’s interest in the case was primarily due to his old friendship with Andrea Casali, whom he had known in his youth. According to the claimant’s statement, Guido had taught the rudiments of his art to the young Andrea, who learned painting as part of his education: ‘Yes Sir’, he said, ‘I attended painting classes, but now I know nothing anymore; I attended painting with Guido Reni for (if I remember correctly) two or three years, but I never exercised myself with the brushes, nor did I paint anything in colours, scandinavian beautiful women but only practiced with the pencil’.38 This statement seems to suggest that Guido Reni may have held drawing schools open to young noblemen or, alternatively, that he may have taught painting in a context of private gatherings of literati and virtuosi, a role that complies with the frequent episodes in Malvasia in which the artist is mentioned in connection to local academies and learned meetings in Bologna.39 This reference ily in the arts. Continue reading
