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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) St Jerome sealing a Letter ca. 1618 oil on canvas (trial version) Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) St Jerome sealing a Letter (detail) ca. 1618 oil on canvas (trial version) Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| 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."
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| 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.
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| 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."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels ca. 1618 drawing (compositional study) Royal Library, Windsor |
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| Nicolas Pitau the Elder after Guercino Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels 1668 etching and engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Thomas Cheesman after Guercino Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels 1813 stipple-engraving British Museum |
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| William Dickes after Guercino Dead Christ Mourned by Two Angels 1889 Baxter-Process colour print British Museum |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Erminia finding the wounded Tancred 1618-19 oil on canvas Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino Erminia finding the wounded Tancred 1620 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 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)."
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| Guercino St Francis meditating on a Crucifix ca. 1618-19 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
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| 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)