Biography

Italian painter, part of a family of painters. He trained with Guercino in Bologna, and his early works, such as the Investiture of St Chiara (1656-57; Pieve di Cento, S Chiara), are close to the style of Guercino. On Guercino's death he and his brother Cesare Gennari directed the studio.

In March 1672, motivated by his admiration for Louis XIV, he journeyed to Paris, where commissions from the French nobility encouraged him to extend his stay over 16 months. In Paris he began to keep a diary (Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna, MS. B 344), which lists his works in chronological sequence.

In September 1674 he travelled to London, where commissions to paint royal portraits inaugurated a lengthy period of residence at the court of Charles II and subsequently of James II (reigned 1685-89). His mythological paintings include four large pictures of scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses (London, Hampton Court, Royal Collection) and Tasso's Rinaldo and Armida (c. 1676-78; private collection). For the Catholic Queen Catherine he painted devotional pictures and altarpieces, among them the Annunciation (1675; Cento, Cassa di Risparmio) and a series of pictures to commemorate important feast days of the Virgin (untraced). A full-length portrait of James II (1686; private collection) marked his appointment as first painter to that monarch. For this court, which zealously promoted the Catholic faith, he continued to paint the traditional subjects of Catholicism, as for example an Annunciation (1686; Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota), painted as an altarpiece for the chapel in the palace at Whitehall, London.

In 1689 he followed James II in exile to the court at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, remaining there until his return to Bologna (1692). In 1709 he became one of the founder-members of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina. Apart from having the most eventful career of the Gennari family, Benedetto II developed, as a portrait painter, an intriguing eccentricity of style and iconography, diverging considerably from its origins in Guercino.