Guido Reni (1575-1642) was a favorite painter of the Shelleys. In the Preface to his tragedy, The Cenci ( Reiman and Powers edn.), Percy Shelley describes at length a famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci he (and Mary) had seen at the Colonna Palace, a painting then (erroneously) attributed to Guido: "the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish."

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Romantic Circles / Electronic Editions / The Last Man / Note: Guido's saints

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