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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) St Sebastian succoured by Two Angels 1617 oil on copper Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino St Sebastian succoured by Two Angels 1623 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Turner illustrates three autograph versions of the St Sebastian succoured by Two Angels, declaring that the Fitzwilliam painting on copper (above) is undoubtedly the final and best of them. The other two versions (one on canvas and one on copper) are in private hands. Surviving also are at least two early copies. The composition was evidently popular, several of Guercino's followers and assistants having painted imitative variants. Two of these are below.
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| follower of Guercino St Sebastian after 1617 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| follower of Guercino St Sebastian (detail) after 1617 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| Matteo Loves (Guercino workshop) St Sebastian after 1625 oil on canvas Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Giovanni Folo after Matteo Loves St Sebastian ca. 1790 engraving British Museum |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Lot and his Daughters 1617 oil on canvas Monasterio El Escorial |
"Stylistically this seems to be the first of four canvases painted for Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, Archbishop of Bologna, during the years 1617-18. Although it is not listed by Malvasia's Felsina pittrice, it was mentioned in his manuscript notes. According to [Denis] Mahon, three of the four works (this one, as well as the Return of the Prodigal Son and the Susanna and the Elders [both below], were painted in 1617, when, as is known from a letter from Ludovico Carracci to Ferrante Carlo, he [Guercino] was working for the Cardinal. . . . Both the Lot and the Susanna appear in the Ludovisi inventory of 1623, and reoccur in the inventory of a decade later. They were bequeathed by Niccolò Ludovisi to Philip IV of Spain; the present picture has been at the Escorial since 1681."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Lot and his Daughters 1617 drawing (compositional study) private collection |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Lot and his Daughters 1617 drawing (compositional study) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Lot and his Daughters 1617 drawing (compositional study) Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Lot and his Daughters 1617 drawing (compositional study) Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Nicolas Mignard after Guercino Lot and his Daughters ca. 1650 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Return of the Prodigal Son ca. 1617 oil on canvas Galleria Sabauda, Turin |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Return of the Prodigal Son ca. 1617 drawing (compositional study) British Museum |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Susanna and the Elders ca. 1617 oil on canvas Museo del Prado, Madrid |
"Unlike the Lot and his Daughters, this work, also bequeathed by Niccolò Ludovisi to Philip IV of Spain, did not remain in the Escorial but was transferred to Madrid at the beginning of the 19th century, first to the Palacio Real (1814), then to the Prado (1843). . . . Malvasia claimed, no doubt apocryphally, that the model for the nude figure of Susanna was a beautiful woman in the archiepiscopal prisons, but Guercino is more likely to have been inspired by the model of a classical statue of Aphrodite, as suggested by José Riello."
– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)