Guercino in Cento - 1632

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias
1632
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias (detail)
1632
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome

The knight at left, witnessing the execution in the detail above, and departing from convention, breaks through the so-called fourth wall, gazing directly at the viewer and lifting a hand in a gesture that might be interpreted as a greeting.

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias (detail)
1632
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias (detail)
1632
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias
1632
drawing (compositional study)
Art Institute of Chicago

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias
1632
drawing (compositional study)
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias
1632
drawing (figure study)
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Damon and Pythias
1632
drawing (figure study)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

"[Carlo Cesare] Malvasia listed Damon and Pythias among the commissions of 1632, painted for Cardinal Giovanni Battista Maria Pallotta, then Papal Legate to Ferrara.  The account book records the Cardinal's payment of 300 scudi on 26 May 1632.  . . .  According to Malvasia's supplementary note about the commission, when Pallotta drew up his will in Rome he instructed his executors to give His Holiness the choice of one of his pictures.  It had generally been assumed that the beneficiary was Pope Alexander VII (Chigi) (reg. 1655-67), but, as [Piero] Boccardo pointed out, Alexander VII died eight months before Pallotta.  The picture was thus offered to Alexander's successor, the Rospigliosi pope Clement IX (reg. 1667-9) – hence its presence to this day in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Stigmatization of St Francis
1632
oil on canvas
Chiesa delle Sacre Stimmate, Ferrara

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Stigmatization of St Francis
1632
drawing (figure studies)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

"Malvasia recorded the Stigmatization of St Francis, still in situ in the church of the Sacre Stimmate, Ferrara, among Guercino's commissions for 1632.  . . .  Despite an agreed price of 100 ducatoni, cited in the account book entry for the deposit, Guercino received a total of only 62 ducats (80 scudi).  The drop in the price is puzzling.  The patrons may have made up the difference by some other means, but Guercino was famed for his rigidity on the issue and had not long before rejected an offer from the canons of Reggio Emilia Cathedral for suffrage for him and the deceased of his family as recompense for his work.  . . .  In the following 20 years, Guercino painted a further six altarpieces of the subject, subtly varying the compositions of each one.  If the seven works are hard to distinguish from one another, even more so are the various preparatory studies made for them."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Virgin and Child with St Lucy, St Francis, 
St John the Evangelist and St John the Baptist
(lost painting)
1632
drawing (figure studies)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

anonymous copyist after Guercino
Neptune with his Trident
(lost painting)
after 1632
oil on canvas
private collection

anonymous copyist after Guercino
Neptune with his Trident (detail)
(lost painting)
after 1632
oil on canvas
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Neptune with his Trident
1632
drawing (compositional study)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Thomas the Apostle
1632
oil on canvas (unfinished)
private collection

"Due to the financial difficulties of a certain 'Signore Colonello di Bologna,' substantial passages of Guercino's warm brown grounds have been preserved for posterity in  the unfinished St Thomas the Apostle (1632) [which remained in the artist's workshop as a model].  At top left, a lightly brushed patch of white indicates the light source.  The grey-black halo around the saint's head is darker than the warm priming, and less reflective, to ease the modelling of the delicate transitions in colour and tone in the saint's head.  Guercino must already have intended dramatic storm clouds as a backdrop, appreciably darker than the light-brown ground, but the artificial halo was a temporary step, meant to be overpainted with sky."

– 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 Bologna - 1631

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Horse Belladonna
(lost painting, known from drawing)
1631
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

"According to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, Guercino's lost portrait of the horse Belladonna, commissioned by Conte Filippo Aldrovandi, was painted from life.  The count paid 31 scudi for it on 24 April 1631."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Portrait of Cardinal Bernardino Spada
1631
oil on canvas (trial version)
Fabiano Forti Bernini Collection, Rome

"This must be Guercino's small-sized oil sketch [directly above] for the more formal, half-length likeness [directly below] of Cardinal Bernardino Spada (1594-1661), now in the Galleria Spada, Rome.  In the Cardinal's last year of tenure as Papal Legate of Bologna, a position he held from 1627 until 1631, he sent two courtiers to Cento to collect a painting of St. Luke [also below] and to bring Guercino back to Bologna to paint his portrait.  . . .  The artist probably made the oil sketch (as well as several preparatory drawings) on that occasion, for it seems unlikely that he would have begun the full-sized painted portrait on site: not only would the canvas have been too large to carry back and forth to Cento – especially if still wet – but this was the sort of picture he normally carried out in the studio."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Portrait of Cardinal Bernardino Spada
1631
oil on canvas (finished version)
Galleria Spada, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Portrait of Cardinal Bernardino Spada
1631
drawing (figure study)
Musée du Louvre

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Luke
1631
oil on canvas
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Alexander enjoining Silence on Hephaestion
 (lost painting known from drawings)
ca. 1631
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Alexander enjoining Silence on Hephaestion
 (lost painting known from drawings)
ca. 1631
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Alexander enjoining Silence on Hephaestion
 (lost painting known from drawings)
ca. 1631
drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

"According to Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great, the King's mother, Olympias, often wrote private letters to her son, which he kept in a secret place.  Once, his close friend Hephaestion, who had access to the King's state papers, saw one of Olympias's letters.  Alexander allowed him to read it, but signified that he trusted his friend to keep its contents confidential by pressing the seal of his signet ring to Hephaestion's lips.  A commission for a painting of this subject is recorded by Malvasia in the year 1631, from 'un Cavalier Bolognese'.  The account book payment of 75 scudi for two half-length figures, received on 31 May 1631, identifies the client as Giovanni Battista Vaccari."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
1631
oil on canvas
Fondazione Zanasi, Modena

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
1631
drawing (compositional study)
Honolulu Museum of Art

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
1631
drawing (compositional study)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife
1631
retouched offset-drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

"Guercino painted the subject of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife twice in his career.  In my opinion, his first treatment of the story is the canvas [above] now in the Zanasi Foundation, Modena, which Malvasia said was ordered from the painter in 1631 by a certain Giuseppe Fallia of Piacenza.  Though Fallia placed the order, the account book payment of 130 scudi, made on 25 August 1631, was from Francesco I, Duke of Modena, who married Maria Caterina Farnese (1615-46), daughter of the Duke of Parma, on 11 January of that same year at a ceremony in Parma Cathedral.  At the time Malvasia wrote his biography, the picture was hanging in the ducal gallery at Modena, then in the possession of Francesco I's grandson, Francesco II d'Este (reg. 1662-94)."

Guercino (or workshop, possibly Matteo Loves)
Amnon and Tamar
ca. 1631 or after
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Amnon and Tamar
ca. 1631
drawing (compositional study)
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

"In my opinion, the finish of the Modena Amnon and Tamar is too precise and polished, even static and frigid, to be by Guercino.  Some details are too literal in their description, such as the leaves of a laurel tree in the right background – studiously painted one by one – and the dancing jewels on long stems that grow out from the side of [Tamar's] hair band.  The glossy draperies and rotund figural forms, shaded like a shiny white porcelain vase, suggest the hand of Matteo Loves, though certainly produced while in Guercino's studio: not only is the painting probably based on one of the master's drawings, Tamar's gold damasked dress was one of Guercino's studio props." 

– 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 Bologna - 1630-1631

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Death of Dido
1630-31
oil on canvas
Galleria Spada, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Death of Dido
1630-31
drawing (compositional study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Death of Dido
1630-31
drawing (figure study - Attendant)
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Death of Dido
1630-31
drawing (figure study - background Soldier)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Robert Strange after Guercino
Death of Dido
1776
etching
British Museum

"For many years now, Guercino's Death of Dido has been shown in the long gallery of the Galleria Spada opposite the copy by Giacinto Campana (c. 1600-50) of Guido Reni's Rape of Helen [directly below], now in the Louvre.  Cardinal Bernardino Spada was Papal Nuncio to France (1623-7), then Papel Legate to Bologna (1627-31), the former appointment accounting for the present commission's strong French connection.  . . .  The idea that Guercino should paint a Dido was probably first mooted to the painter in a letter of 27 October 1629 from Cardinal Spada, who from his time in France had become a fast friend of the Queen Mother of France, Maria de' Medici.  Soon after Spada had attempted to buy Reni's Rape of Helen for the Queen Mother, he wrote to Guercino [proposing the creation of a Dido as companion piece].  Had the Cardinal's plans come to fruition, he obviously intended the two paintings to be paired in the Queen Mother's collection.  . . .  However, both plans were abandoned owing to the political upheavals in France that began in the autumn of 1630 and eventually led to the Queen fleeing the country on 18 July 1631.  As the account book shows, Cardinal Spada had to assume payment for the Dido, remitting 400 scudi for it on 14 November 1631, but the finished picture was stuck in Bologna because of the ban on the movement of persons or objects out of Emilia during the plague of 1631.  It was only in April of 1632 that it eventually made its way to Spada's palace in Rome." 

Guido Reni
Rape of Helen
ca. 1626-29
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus
1631
ceiling fresco in stucco frame by another hand
Palazzo Talon (formerly Sampieri), Bologna

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus (detail)
1631
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Talon (formerly Sampieri), Bologna

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus (detail)
1631
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Talon (formerly Sampieri), Bologna

"The fresco is in the centre of the ceiling of a ground-floor room of the Palazzo Sampieri, now Talon, of which three other rooms had been painted by the Carracci.  [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia recorded the fresco in 1631 and remarked that the painter was so well versed in drawing that he was able to paint it without the use of a cartoon.  He was paid 100 scudi on 6 October 1631 – presumably 50 scudi for each figure."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus
1631
drawing (compositional study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus
1631
drawing (figure study - Antaeus)
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules and Antaeus
1631
drawing (figure study - Antaeus)
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Jean-Honoré Fragonard after Guercino
Hercules and Antaeus
ca. 1760
copy drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Paolo Antonio Barbieri (brother of Guercino)
Portrait of Guercino with his mother, Elena Ghisellini
and a Lagotto Romagnolo dog
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Fondazione Sorgente Group, Rome

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

Guercino in Cento - 1630-1631

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Mars as Warrior
1630
oil on canvas
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Venus and Cupid
1630
oil on canvas
Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Venus and Cupid
1630
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Sophonisba
1630
oil on canvas (trial version)
Fondazione Sorgente Group, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Sophonisba
1630
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Sophonisba
1630
oil on canvas (finished version)
Fondazione Sorgente Group, Rome

"The two [versions of Sophonisba] have the same dimensions, suggesting that the contours of the figure were transferred from one canvas to the other.  The empty fluted gold cup is much the same in both works, and even Sophonisba's features are similar."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Crucifixion
with Sts Francesca Romana
and Elizabeth of Hungary
1630
oil on canvas
Potocki Chapel
Cathedral of Sts Stanislaus & Wenceslaus
Krakow, Poland

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Crucifixion
with Sts Francesca Romana
and Elizabeth of Hungary
1630
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
The Crucifixion
with Sts Francesca Romana
and Elizabeth of Hungary
1630
drawing (figure study - St Elizabeth)
Ashmolean Museum Oxford

"Among Guercino's commissions for 1630, [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia mentioned an altarpiece of The Crucifixion with Sts Francesca Romana and Elizabeth of Hungary, for 'Sig. Pietro Martire Merlini da Forlì', which the patron intended to place over an altar in the church of the Madonna del Popolo, outside Forlì.  The account book records a payment of 300 scudi to the painter on 29 October that same year.  As in many representations of the saint from the time, St. Elizabeth of Hungary is shown wearing a crown and is sometimes referred to, as indeed by Malvasia, as Queen Elizabeth of Hungary.  Though of noble birth, she was never a queen, only a princess.  . . .  The altarpiece remained in the church of the Madonna del Popolo until 1808, when the Merlini family, still the titular owners of the chapel, took possession of it rather than following the diktat of the newly established Italian Republic and conceding its transfer to Milan.  It seems that Artur and Zofia Potocki bought The Crucifixion and the St Francis in Ecstasy with an Angel [c. 1620] on their second visit to Italy in 1829-30, acting on the advice of a Florentine dealer, Fedele Acciai."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Moses holding the Tables of the Law
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
private collection

"No painting of the subject is mentioned in either Malvasia or the account book, but a similar composition is documented in a finished drawing in the Louvre [directly below], in which the half-length Moses turns towards the spectator and points to one of the tables of of the law.  The physical type is the same in both works, as, too, is the way soft shafts of light indicated by the smudging of the media represent the prophet's horns.  A compositionally related engraving of the same subject [also below] by Pasqualini, dated 1630, also shows the prophet half length, but this time in profile to the right."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Moses holding the Tables of the Law
ca. 1630
drawing (compositional study)
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino
Moses holding the Tables of the Law
1630
engraving
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Moses holding the Tables of the Law
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Landscape with St Paul the Hermit
1631
oil on canvas
private collection

"[Landscape with St Paul the Hermit] was ordered by the Comunità di Cento as a gift for the Vice Legate of Ferrara, Monsignor Fabio Chigi (1599-1667), the future Pope Alexander VII (reg. 1655-67).  Guercino charged them 46 scudi, a stiff price for a picture of only small dimensions, presumably because the landscape details, especially the great tree at left, were as time-consuming as a standard half-length figure.  He was paid on 15 October 1631.  This appears to be the artist's last independent landscape in which human action is subordinated to natural surroundings."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St Andrea Corsini
1631
oil on canvas
Galleria Corsini, Florence

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