Massacre of the Innocents
Guido Reni, 1611
BaroqueReligious PaintingItalian Artists
Overview
About This Work
Painted in 1611, The Massacre of the Innocents is a monumental oil on canvas (268 x 170 cm) by Guido Reni, originally commissioned for the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna and now housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. The work depicts the biblical episode from the Gospel of Matthew (2:16-18), wherein Herod, fearful that the newly-born Christ Child would usurp his throne, ordered the slaughter of all male infants under two years of age in Bethlehem and surrounding territories. Reni, trained in the Bolognese school of the Carracci Academy, synthesizes elements of classical sculpture, Renaissance composition (Raphael and Mantegna), and Caravaggesque drama into a revolutionary visual representation of maternal grief and human suffering. The painting exemplifies the Counter-Reformation demand for emotionally engaging religious art while simultaneously challenging the aesthetic conventions of violence and beauty—an oxymoron Reni navigates by transforming brutality into formal perfection.
Visual Analysis
Composition
Structure & Dynamism: The composition is organized along intersecting diagonals that create a relentless sense of movement and chaos without dissolving into disorder. The painting deploys a tournant (rotating) structure where the viewer's eye is drawn through multiple simultaneous moments of violence—mothers fleeing, soldiers advancing, children being seized—along overlapping diagonal vectors. Unlike Renaissance compositions built on pyramid stability, Reni's diagonals destabilize the picture plane, intensifying the viewer's psychological discomfort.
Classical Order within Chaos: Despite the violence depicted, Reni maintains a carefully balanced compositional architecture. The figures are distributed across the canvas with symmetrical responses: a soldier attacking from the right is "answered" by a mother defending from the left; a fleeing figure is paralleled by another in different pose but similar diagonal thrust. This mirroring creates a sense of inexorable order—the evil is not random but systematized, giving it a terrifying inevitability.
Foreground/Background Recession: In the foreground, bodies overlap in dense accumulation—a stone monument (recalling the classical rock of the Church, Peter as petra) anchors the composition. The background recedes through layers of figures and architecture (a classical temple structure), though the depth is compressed rather than illusionistic. The space feels confined, trapping the mothers and children in an inescapable arena.
The Focal Points: Multiple focal points prevent visual repose. The eye cannot settle on a single tragic moment but is instead propelled through a litany of suffering: the mother in the foreground-right (modeled on the Niobe sculpture) with her head thrown back; the soldier with sword raised; the woman fleeing to the right with her child; the kneeling mother in prayer; the helpless infants.
Colour & Light
Palette: Reni employs a luminous, polychromatic palette that paradoxically enhances the horror of the scene. Richly-coloured draperies—saturated reds, blues, and golds—envelop the figures, creating a surface brilliance that contrasts violently with the subject matter. The voluminous fabrics (references to Bologna's silk-producing prominence and to classical drapery in sculpture) seem almost indifferent to the violence, asserting formal beauty against narrative brutality.
The "Celestial" Light: Unlike Caravaggio's tenebrism, which isolates figures in dramatic darkness, Reni employs a diffuse, cool light (perhaps suggesting the clarity of the divine witness). The light is not naturalistic—there is no single source—but rather an all-pervading illumination that treats the scene with an almost ethereal quality, creating what critics describe as a "celestial glow" even amid slaughter.
Tonal Values: The painting employs a cool tonality—pale blues, silvers, pale greens—that creates emotional distance and psychological alienation from the violence. This coolness is both beautiful and deeply unsettling, embodying the contradiction central to Marino's poem: "horror goes with delight."
Contrasts: Pale flesh tones of the mothers and infants contrast with the darker armour and clothing of the soldiers, creating a visual hierarchy where the innocent glow with a kind of inner luminosity while their murderers are rendered dark and brutish.
Materials & Technique
Medium & Support: Oil on canvas. The large scale and the horizontal orientation position the viewer as if witnessing the scene at eye level, creating an immersive rather than distanced relationship.
Process & Secrecy: According to Reni's biographer Gian Pietro Bellori (1672), Reni painted "beneath a cloak," banishing every mechanical act—indicating an attempt to conceal his technique and working process. Students in his studio were forbidden from observing closely, and Reni transported unfinished paintings to external spaces to prevent unauthorized copying. This secrecy suggests Reni viewed his technique as proprietary intellectual property, tied to his commercial success.
Preparatory Methods: Unlike Caravaggio's direct incision method, Reni likely employed classical cartoons and preliminary drawings (though few survive). His approach was more planful and academic—rooted in life drawing and anatomical study at the Carracci Academy—rather than spontaneous.
Surface Quality: The paint application varies: some areas (particularly drapery) are richly built up with thick impasto, while faces and flesh tones are rendered with smooth, subtle blending (sfumato). This variation creates a surface that is simultaneously polished and energetic.
Classical References Embedded: The figure of the mother in the foreground-right directly invokes the Niobe sculpture (from the Niobid group discovered in Rome in 1583 and now in the Uffizi). Reni has translated three-dimensional sculpture into painting, capturing the twisted contortion and upward gaze of the marble original. Similarly, compositional structures derive from Renaissance engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi (after Raphael) and Mantegna, creating a visual palimpsest of high art tradition.
Historical Context
Context
The Artist: Guido Reni (1575–1642) was born in Bologna and trained initially under Denys Calvaert before joining the revolutionary Accademia degli Incamminati (Academy of the Newly Embarked) founded by Ludovico Carracci around 1582. This academy rejected Mannerist artificiality in favour of naturalism informed by the study of great Renaissance masters (Raphael, Correggio, Titian). Reni left Bologna in late 1601 for Rome, where he encountered Caravaggio's revolutionary work and engaged in a complex, competitive response—attempting to "outdo Caravaggio" by absorbing his dramatic intensity while maintaining classical idealization.
The Period: The painting was executed during the height of the Counter-Reformation, in the context of the Council of Trent's demand for art that was "clear, realistic, and emotionally stimulating" to inspire devotion and combat Protestant iconoclasm. The Jubilee Year of 1600 had brought intense religious fervor to Rome. The Massacre of the Innocents—a subject emphasizing martyrdom and the ultimate triumph of faith over worldly evil—aligned perfectly with Counter-Reformation theology and the Church's emphasis on saints as intercessors and protectors.
Commission: The painting was commissioned by the aristocratic Berò family of Bologna for the Basilica of San Domenico (or possibly the Dominican order itself). Reni likely executed it in Rome around 1611, drawing on his immersion in classical sculpture and Renaissance art. The choice of the Dominican church signals the theological importance of the subject: the massacre prefigures Christ's Passion and confirms the innocence of the martyred children.
Reni's Response to Caravaggio: While in Rome, Reni studied Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St. Matthew in the Contarelli Chapel (1600), directly incorporating the "frightened child in the arms of the woman" from Caravaggio's composition. However, Reni's approach fundamentally diverges: where Caravaggio uses tenebrism and brutal realism, Reni employs luminosity and idealization. This is not mere borrowing but rather a philosophical riposte—Reni argues that violence and suffering can be represented through beauty and classical form.
Key Themes
Connection to Baroque
Exam Focus Points
Critical Perspectives
Schopenhauer's Critique: The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in his World as Will and Representation, criticized Reni for depicting "six shrieking, wide-open, gaping mouths." Schopenhauer argued that painting, being a mute art, cannot convincingly depict sound—the open mouths appear ludicrous and break the pictorial illusion. This critique raises the fundamental question: can painting represent emotional extremity without descending into caricature?
The Marino Controversy: Marino's poem was originally thought to reference Reni's painting but scholarship (particularly by Pericolo) has shown that Marino's madrigal was likely written about a different, now-lost painting by Giovanni Paggi. This historical confusion is itself instructive: it reveals how powerfully Reni's work captures the aesthetic and emotional complexity that Marino articulates, making attribution almost secondary to the universal truths the image expresses.
Bolognese Idealism vs. Caravaggian Realism: In exam answers, contrast Reni's approach with Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St. Peter (contemporary, 1601). Where Caravaggio grounds the scene in dirt, shadows, and physical labour, Reni elevates it through classical form, luminosity, and sculptural beauty. Both artists respond to Counter-Reformation demands, but through opposite aesthetic strategies. Reni's choice of idealization does not diminish the horror but rather suggests that beauty and tragedy are inseparable.
The Oxymoron as Artistic Method: The painting's central logic is oxymoronic—beautiful rendering of violence, perfection depicting brutality. This is not a failure of nerve but rather a sophisticated argument about art's capacity to simultaneously beautify and defamiliarize. By making the massacre visually exquisite, Reni prevents easy emotional discharge; the viewer cannot simply pity or condemn, but must hold the contradiction.
Influence on Later Art: The painting became foundational for French Neoclassical painters (Le Sueur, Le Brun) and influenced Picasso's Guernica (1937), which similarly constructs an anti-war statement through formal complexity rather than explicit political rhetoric. This genealogy positions Reni as a proto-modernist, demonstrating that formal innovation and political content are not opposed.