Guercino in Cento and Ferrara - 1619

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Samson captured by the Philistines
1619
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Samson captured by the Philistines
1619
drawing (figure study, Samson)
Fondation Custodia, Paris

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Samson captured by the Philistines
1619
drawing (compositional study)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"As noted by [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, Guercino painted [Samson captured by the Philistines] in Ferrara in 1619 for Cardinal Serra, according to Roberto Longhi as a pendant to the Raising of Lazarus in the Louvre [directly below].  The pictures are similar in style, format, and composition, but, as Everett Fahy has noted, there is no obvious thematic connection between them.  The present picture – long thought lost, but brought to the attention of Denis Mahon by Hugh Leggatt in the late 1970s – evidently passed from the cardinal into the collection of the Serra Dukes of Cassano at Naples.  . . .  It then descended in the family to Maria Teresa Serra di Cassano and her husband, Alfred-Bey Sursock, of Palais Sursock, Beirut, and thence to their daughter Yvonne, who in 1946 married Sir Desmond Cochrane (1918-79), 3rd Bt.  It was purchased in 1979 by Mr and Mrs Charles Wrightsman, who bequeathed it to the museum in 1984."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1619
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1619
drawing (compositional study)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino
The Raising of Lazarus
1621
engraving
British Museum

Vivant-Denon after Guercino
The Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1792
etching
British Museum

Antoine-François Gelée after Guercino
The Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1804-15
etching and engraving
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Mary Magdalene
(adapted from the sister of Lazarus, above)
ca. 1619
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Sister of Lazarus, or, Mary Magdalene 
ca. 1619
drawing (figure study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Sister of Lazarus, or, Mary Magdalene 
ca. 1619
offset-drawing (figure study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Head of a Girl
ca. 1619
oil on paper (study head)
private collection

"This is one of the very few surviving oil studies on paper by Guercino.  Presumably as an object lesson for his pupils, he set himself the challenge of creating an idealized head based on a live model, representing her black hair intertwined with white ribbons and relegating her pretty face to shadow.  . . .  The treatment of the girl's full and rounded ear fits precisely with Guercino's style of that moment, but also with his didactic activities of the same period.  One of the 21 engravings that Oliviero Gatti (1579-after 1648) engraved after Guercino's series of drawings of anatomical and figure subjects, represents exactly similar ears [both drawing and engraving below]."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Studies of Ears
1619
drawing (for manual engraved by Oliviero Gatti)
Morgan Library, New York

Oliviero Gatti after Guercino
Studies of Ears
1619
engraving (for published drawing manual)
Harvard Art Museums

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Alexius
ca. 1619
oil on canvas
private collection

– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)

Guercino in Cento - 1618-1619 (II)

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Martyrdom of St Peter
ca. 1618-19
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Turner notices that the executioner painted into the bottom right corner of Guercino's Martyrdom of St Peter is a mirror-image of the executioner in the upper left corner of Caravaggio's Martyrdom of St Peter [directly below], installed seventeen years earlier in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.  Yet the young Guercino would not make his first trip to Rome for another three years.  Given Caravaggio's posthumous celebrity, Turner suggests that drawings of his composition must have penetrated to artistic circles in Emilia, where they could have reached Guercino. 

Caravaggio
Martyrdom of St Peter
1601
oil on canvas
Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Guido Reni
Martyrdom of St Peter
1604
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

For his own Martyrdom of St Peter of 1604, Guido Reni did have access to the Caravaggio painting.  Reni's altarpiece was also installed in a Roman church (San Paolo alle Tre Fontane) – equally unavailable to Guercino in Cento as early as 1618.  Yet Turner points out that the central group in the younger artist's preparatory drawing below "is much the same as in Reni's, but in reverse."  By its ephemeral nature, the circulation of copy-drawings between groups of artists from one region of Italy to another is a topic more amenable to inference and speculation than evidence. 

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Martyrdom of St Peter
ca. 1618-19
drawing (compositional study)
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Martyrdom of St Peter
ca. 1618-19
drawing (drapery study, St Peter)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Jean-Honoré Fragonard after Guercino
Martyrdom of St Peter
ca. 1760
copy drawing
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

In his finished altarpiece Guercino settled on an earlier moment in St. Peter's ordeal, avoiding the tricky matter of depicting him with appropriate pathos and solemnity while upside-down.   

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Sebastian Succoured
1619
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

"According to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, [St Sebastian Succoured] was painted in 1619 for Cardinal Serra, whose first cousin Giovanni Francesco Serra (1609-56) settled at Cassano in the Kingdom of Naples in 1631.  The picture remained in Naples and descended via marriages between two branches of the Serra family and members of the Caracciolo and Carafa families, eventually hanging in the Palazzo Caracciolo-Carafa on the Riviera di Chiaia.  In 1970 the Italian State purchased it on behalf of the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, at auction from the Caracciolo-Carafa heirs, and the following year it was presented, after its restoration."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Sebastian Succoured
1619
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Sebastian Succoured
1619
offset drawing (compositional study)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Study of a Half-Length Female in the Guise of a Sibyl
1619
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

"The painting was bequeathed to the museum by Sir Denis Mahon, who had acquired it in 1952.  It had previously belonged to William Douglas-Hamilton (1845-95), 12th Duke of Hamilton, who sold it in 1882, when it was bought by George Howard (1843-1911), later 9th Earl of Carlisle; it remained at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, until its auction in 1944 from the estate of the Hon. Geoffrey W.A. Howard (1877-1935).  [Giuliano] Briganti published it as a study for the figure of Irene on the left of St Sebastian Succoured, known at the time only through copies.  According to Mahon, the unfinished preliminary oil study was subsequently transformed into an independent, saleable subject, a Sibyl, by replacing her sponge with a scroll and adding a book on the table over which she is bent."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Return of the Prodigal Son
1619
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"In these canvases, Guercino's pre-Roman style is seen at is most vigorous.  Titian's colour and confident brushwork is blended with the Carracci's naturalism and softness of form.  So massive are the figures in relation to the picture space that they seem to burst forwards beyond their allocated space."

Anton Joseph von Prenner after Guercino
Return of the Prodigal Son
1733
engraving
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Mauro Gandolfi after Guercino
Return of the Prodigal Son
ca. 1790
copy drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Blasius Höfel after Guercino
Return of the Prodigal Son
ca. 1821-28
etching and engraving
British Museum

– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)

Guercino in Cento - 1618-1619 (I)

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Jerome sealing a Letter
ca. 1618
oil on canvas (trial version)
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Jerome sealing a Letter (detail)
ca. 1618
oil on canvas (trial version)
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Jerome sealing a Letter
ca. 1618
oil on canvas (finished version)
private collection, Rome

"The issue of whether Guercino painted trial versions – previously not recognized as part of his working methods – came to a head in 2000, when two variants of St Jerome Sealing a Letter (c. 1618), one belonging to the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, the other to a private collection, Rome, were shown together in the exhibition Guercino e la pittura emiliana del '600.  Sir Denis Mahon had long considered the Barberini painting to be a copy (hence its omission from [the catalogue raisonné of Luigi] Salerno), but, after seeing x-rays of the picture in 1999 (which revealed many important pentiments, especially in the drapery), he changed his mind.  He accepted it as Guercino's first idea and coined the term 'bozzettone' for such a trial version.  The proper recognition of autograph trial versions, previously dismissed as studio copies, is the aspect of Guercino's oeuvre that has undergone the most revision since the publication of Salerno [in 1988], for many additional examples of this phenomenon can now be identified."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Landscape with St Jerome seated, reading from a Book
ca. 1618
drawing (compositional study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The study of St. Jerome in the Ashmolean (above) is thought to have been a preparation for an oil sketch, now in Schloss Rohrau in Austria.  That small painting, in turn, as Turner suggests, probably represented an early thought for the first version of St. Jerome Sealing a Letter.

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels
ca. 1618
oil on copper
National Gallery, London

"During the 17th century the painting was in the collection of the Borghese family in whose 1693 inventory it is recorded.  It came to England by 1800 and was owned by Admiral Lord Radstock when it was engraved in 1813 [one of several reproductions below].  The Rev. Carr, a founding member of the British Institution, London, was responsible for the picture's exhibition there in both 1816 and 1828."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels
ca. 1618
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Nicolas Pitau the Elder after Guercino
Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels
1668
etching and engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Thomas Cheesman after Guercino
Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels
1813
stipple-engraving
British Museum

William Dickes after Guercino
Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels
1889
Baxter-Process colour print
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Erminia finding the wounded Tancred
1618-19
oil on canvas
Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome

Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino
Erminia finding the wounded Tancred
1620
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Thomas Rowlandson after Guercino
Erminia finding the wounded Tancred
ca. 1790
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"According to Tasso's account in Gerusalemme liberata (Canto XIX: 103-110), Tancred, after being injured by Argante during the siege of Jerusalem, was helped by his friend Vafrino – the turbaned figure seen here at left – showing Tancred's wounds to his distressed lover, Erminia: she would eventually tend to Tancred's wounds with the braided tresses of her own hair.  [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia stated that this – one of Guercino's best-known works, distinguished by its monumental, lively sense of drama, strong contrasts of light and dark, and velvety colours – was commissioned in 1618 by the Cento mosaicist Marcello Provenzale, who donated it to Cardinal Stefano Pignatelli (1578-1623)."

Guercino
St Francis meditating on a Crucifix
ca. 1618-19
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Francis meditating on a Crucifix
ca. 1618-19
drawing (compositional study)
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)

Guercino in Cento and Venice - 1618

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Raising of Tabitha
1618
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Raising of Tabitha
1618
drawing (compositional study)
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Cornelis Bloemaert after Guercino
Raising of Tabitha
ca. 1650-60
engraving
Wellcome Collection, London

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."

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."     

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."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Apollo flaying Marsyas
1618
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Apollo flaying Marsyas
1618
drawing (compositional study)
Courtauld Gallery, London

Cosimo Mogalli after Guercino
Apollo flaying Marsyas
ca. 1690-1700
etching and engraving
British Museum

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."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Landscape with Bathing Women
ca. 1618
drawing (figure study)
Musée du Louvre

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."

Scarsellino
Nymphs Bathing
ca. 1600-1605
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Angel of the Annunciation
ca. 1618
oil on copper
Palazzo Corsini, Rome

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)