History has not been kind to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, the Italian Baroque painter who is better known by his artistic nickname, Guercino — "the Squinter."
Despite being one of the acknowledged greats of European painting during one of its finest periods, in recent times he has languished in relative obscurity as far as the general public is concerned.
This is partly because modern-day artistic appreciation has moved away from the grand, religious subject matter that Guercino specialized in and toward the landscapes and genre paintings of his period. It is also because the main dramas of Western art happened before him or afterward, so his life story seems less eventful or significant than that of other artists. But it is now the role of Tokyo's National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) to revive the reputation of this neglected genius with an excellent show that brings around 40 of his large canvases to Tokyo.