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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Virgin and Child (Madonna della Ghiara) ca. 1599 detached fresco (formerly on exterior wall of Guercino's childhood home) private collection, Cento |
"The composition is taken from an engraving [below] of the much-copied votive image of the Madonna della Ghiara [also below] frescoed in the church of that name in Reggio Emilia in 1573 by Giovanni Bianchi, called il Bertone (fl. 1559-74), after a drawing by Lelio Orsi (1508/11-1587). According to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, the eight-year-old Guercino painted his fresco of the subject outside the door of his parents' country house, located beyond the Porta Chiusa in Cento. It was still situated there in 1678, when Malvasia saw it. . . . The house was owned by the family until 1786, when it was bought by Padre Leopoldo Tangerini, who detached the fresco, incorporating it in 1791 into one of the rooms in the new structure he had erected on the site. In 1839, Stefano and Giacomo Carpeggiani bought the house, and the fresco remained in their family until 1982, when it was sold to the present owners."
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| Jan Sadeler the Elder Madonna della Ghiara ca. 1596 engraving, after a drawing by Lelio Orsi Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo |
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| Giovanni Bianchi (il Bertone) Madonna della Ghiara 1573 fresco, after a drawing by Lelio Orsi Basilica della Madonna della Ghiara, Reggio Emilia |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Portrait of Padre Antonio Mirandola before 1610 oil on copper Grimaldi Fava Collection, Cento |
"Alessandro Brogi was the first, in 1995, to recognize the hand of the young Guercino in this portrait, previously attributed to Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747). He plausibly suggested that the sitter might be Guercino's friend Padre Antonio Mirandola. . . . The same man with piercing eyes, evidently a few years older, is dressed as one of the saints in the left-hand fragment of the altarpiece of All Saints in Glory [farther below], since Mirandola secured the commission for that altarpiece for Guercino. The vitality of Guercino's fluid brushwork in the Fava portrait is impressive and shows how strongly he was inspired at this early period of his career by the pictorial tradition of Correggio and Annibale Carracci."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Angels holding the Sudarium ca. 1612-13 detached fresco Pinacoteca Civica, Cento |
"The fresco – formerly in the church of S. Maria Addolorata dei Servi, Cento – was attributed to Guercino by local 18th-century historians Girolamo Baruffaldi (1675-1753/55) and Orazio Cammillo Righetti (fl. 1768), and, although not mentioned by Malvasia, there is no reason to doubt the local tradition."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Studies for Allegorical Figure of Abundance 1613 drawing Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Study for Allegorical Figure of Justice 1613 drawing private collection |
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| Stefano Mulinari after Guercino Study for Allegorical Figures of Prudence and Justice ca. 1770 etching after Guercino drawing Wellcome Collection, London |
"Guercino's earliest public fresco, formerly on the exterior walls of the Palazzo della Comunità (now Palazzo Comunale), Cento, is lost, but, according to Malvasia, the works he painted in 1613, including this fresco [of the Four Cardinal Virtues], attracted the interest of molti pittori, tirati dalla fama, [che] si portarono da Bologna a Cento per vedere[le]." ("many painters, drawn by its fame to travel from Bologna to Cento to see it")
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Portrait of Padre Antonio Mirandola among Saints 1613 oil on canvas (fragment cut from lost altarpiece of All Saints in Glory) private collection, France |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) All Saints in Glory (modello for lost altarpiece) 1613 drawing Musée du Louvre |
"According to Malvasia, the altarpiece [All Saints in Glory] was commissioned from the 22-year-old artist in 1613 by Don Biagio Bagni for the church of Spirito Santo at Cento, probably at the suggestion of fellow Centese churchman Padre Antonio Mirandola who, together with Bagni, had had the church built in 1610. It quickly became an icon of the town. During the Napoleonic occupation of Italy in 1796, the painting was removed to Paris, where along with other pictures looted from northern Italy it was exhibited two years later at the Louvre. Subsequently transferred to the cathedral of Notre-Dame, it was last documented in 1811."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) God the Father ca. 1613 detached fresco Pinacoteca Civica, Cento |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) The Annunciation ca. 1613 detached fresco Pinacoteca Civica, Cento |
"[The two frescoes above] come from the church of Spirito Santo, Cento: God the Father was originally located above a lost altarpiece of Sts. James and Christopher by Carlo Bononi, and The Annunciation originally crowned Guercino's lost altarpiece of All Saints in Glory. Both frescoes entered the Pinacoteca Civica by 1891, almost certainly having been removed c. 1884 when the church was renovated. . . . When transferred to fibreglass in 1990, a sinopia beneath The Annunciation was revealed [below]."
– quoted texts above from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) The Annunciation ca. 1613 sinopia beneath detached fresco Pinacoteca Civica, Cento |
"Buon fresco is applied through several stages. The wall having been rough-plastered, a finer coat of plaster, the arriccio, is then applied. On this the composition is drawn. . . . The reddish-brown pigment utilized in the underdrawing is called sinopia, and the term is now applied to the drawing on the arriccio itself. Many sinopie have been revealed through the process of detaching frescoes from their original support in the course of restoration and conservation."
– Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists, by Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton (2000)
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) The Annunciation ca. 1613 drawing (compositional study for fresco) Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |