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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Raising of Tabitha 1618 oil on canvas Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Raising of Tabitha 1618 drawing (compositional study) Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cornelis Bloemaert after Guercino Raising of Tabitha ca. 1650-60 engraving Wellcome Collection, London |
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| Cosimo Mogalli after Guercino Raising of Tabitha ca. 1685 etching British Museum |
"According to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, [The Raising of Tabitha] was executed in 1618 for Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, then Archbishop of Bologna. It is not, however, listed in the 1623 or 1633 inventories of his nephew Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, perhaps because it belonged to Ludovico's brother Niccolò Ludovisi, Prince of Piombino, or because it was located elsewhere. The legend on Bloemaert's undated engraving [also above] is dedicated to Giovanni Battista Ludovisi (1647-99), Prince of Piombino, who was Niccolò's son and heir. In 1686 Filippo Baldinucci (the curator of the Medici grand-ducal collections, who knew the engraving), referred to the painting as the property of 'quei di casa Colonna'. It is thus likely that the painting was still in Rome, with the Colonna family, and that it entered the Florentine grand ducal collection soon after that date: it appears in the undated inventory of Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici (1642-1723) and in that of 1713 recording the paintings belonging to his son, Grand Prince Ferdinand de' Medici (1663-1713)."
"In 1618 Guercino, accompanied by Padre Pietro Martire Pederzani (a colleague of Padre [Antonio] Mirandola), visited Venice, where he met the Venetian painter Jacopo Palma il Giovane (1548/50-1628). Palma showed him some of Titian's paintings, a master 'of whom Signore Gio Francesco became more and more passionate, carrying an image of him engraved in his heart as the ideal for which painters should strive.' The influence of Titian's rich, sombre palette and vibrant textures echoes in Guercino's paintings of the late 1610s: lush blues, purples, burgundies and oranges emerge imperceptibly from the twilight of his compositions – many of them set under a glowing overcast or night sky –subtly modulating the intensity of the chiaroscuro."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Et in Arcadia ego 1618 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
"[Denis] Mahon theorized that [Et in Arcadia ego] started off as a full-sized preparatory sketch for the two shepherds on the left of Guercino's large Apollo and Marsyas of 1618 [directly below], which are painted to the same scale. Once this motif had been successfully incorporated into the larger canvas, Guercino would have returned to the present canvas, brought the detail to a higher level of finish and added the landscape, skull and motto [carved on the pillar supporting the skull] to make an independent work of it."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Apollo flaying Marsyas 1618 oil on canvas Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
"Because of its colouring – a romantic world bathed in warm browns and reds but animated by the azure of the sky (a palette that recalls the Venetian spirit of Giorgione and early Titian) – Mahon dated the [Apollo flaying Marsyas] shortly after Guercino's visit to Venice in the spring of 1618."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Apollo flaying Marsyas 1618 drawing (compositional study) Royal Library, Windsor |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Apollo flaying Marsyas 1618 drawing (compositional study) Courtauld Gallery, London |
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| Cosimo Mogalli after Guercino Apollo flaying Marsyas ca. 1690-1700 etching and engraving British Museum |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Landscape with Bathing Women ca. 1618 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
"[The Landscape with Bathing Women], formerly attributed to Johann Liss (c. 1595/1600-1631), was discovered in Paris by Vitale Bloch (1900-75), who bequeathed it as an autograph Guercino to the [Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen] in 1976. It had formerly belonged to Everhard Jabach (1618-95) and Louis XIV (reg. 1643-1715), in whose inventory of 1683 (compiled by Charles Le Brun) it appears as Guercino."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Landscape with Bathing Women ca. 1618 drawing (figure study) Musée du Louvre |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Landscape with Bathing Women ca. 1618 drawing (figure study) Royal Library, Windsor |
"Guercino quickly absorbed the ideas of other painters that impressed him – living and dead. Aside from the wider debt owed by Women Bathing to the landscape paintings of the Carracci and the naturalistic glimpses of lush, open countryside and woodland by 16th-century Venetian painters such as Giorgione and Titian (with their palette of deep, saturated blues, olive greens, yellow ochres and browns), other specific sources of inspiration include Scarsellino's imposing painting of Nymphs Bathing [directly below] in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts."
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| Scarsellino Nymphs Bathing ca. 1600-1605 oil on canvas Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Angel of the Annunciation ca. 1618 oil on copper Palazzo Corsini, Rome |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Virgin of the Annunciation ca. 1618 oil on copper Palazzo Corsini, Rome |
– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)