Abstract

Guido Reni, admired by the art critics in the Baroque for the «grace», the «terribleness», the Raphaelesque classicism, and the «devotion», received a drastic change in the interpretation of his works in the century of the «good taste» of the Arcadia. For Pier Jacopo Martello, this great figure from the same town is only a «delicate» painter, one who is often ingenious in his use of light «digression» within an image. Through materials formerly almost unnoticed such as the pastoral "Degli occhi di Gesù", the essay written in defense of this piece, and a manuscript ode conserved in the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, the gaze of this poet is reconstructed. The poetics of Martello, a moderate Petrarchist, is today considered as Empirical-Sensationalistic; our study can contribute to improving the precision of this definition.