Woman with a Pillow

From the Minneapolis Institute of Art record

The Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni produced etchings sporadically over the course of his long, successful career--around two dozen original prints, plus, a handful of reproductive prints at the start of his career, after designs by artists he admired. This etching copies a work by the virtuoso draftsman Parmigianino, an artist who spent three years in Bologna, Reni's hometown, after fleeing the Sack of Rome in 1527. Some seventy years later, Reni and his compatriots studied and copied the older master's works, mining his prolific graphic oeuvre for elegant figures, inventive poses, surprising viewpoints that Parmiginiano drew with dizzying speed and fluidity, figure after figure, invention after invention. This small etching and its pair, Woman with a Crucifix (2024.14.1.2), are among Reni's earliest surviving works. Italy, Europe