This large room hosts the marvellous Guido Reni (1575-1642), best expression of the Classical ideal of the XVIIth century.

When Reni was still a child, he entered in the workshop of the flamish painter Denys Calvaert, of which he was pupil for ten years, reaching an high level of importance in that workshop.

In 1594 Guido left Calvaert to enter in the Incamminati Academy, where his talents were appreciated by Ludovico Carracci of which he became pupil and then rival.

The execution of the fresco for the entering in Bologna of the Pope Clemens Clemente VIII Aldobrandini (1598), was the beginning of a brilliant career that lead him in Rome in 1601, where he lived albeit with several interruptions, until 1614.

In the circle of the Papal court, he received important contracts.

The suggiostions from the ancient roman scupture, with Raphael and the classical language used in Rome by Annibale Carracci, lead Guido into an ever more profound "ideal" representation of reality. This continuous impulse towards the "ideal beauty" was the constant note in all the developmente of his career, which ended with artworks almost misterious, where the quality of the bodies loses weight and acquires a supernatural lightness.

In this room are displayed the most improtant paintings realised in Bologna, in a succession that retrace all the stages of his artistic life.