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| Guercino (or workshop copy) Four Evangelists - St Matthew ca. 1623 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Pietro Fontana after Guercino Four Evangelists - St Matthew ca. 1800-1810 engraving British Museum |
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| Guercino (or workshop copy) Four Evangelists - St Luke ca. 1623 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Pietro Fontana after Guercino Four Evangelists - St Luke ca. 1800-1810 engraving British Museum |
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| Pietro Fontana after Guercino Four Evangelists - St Mark ca. 1800-1810 engraving British Museum |
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| Pietro Fontana after Guercino Four Evangelists - St John the Evangelist ca. 1800-1810 engraving British Museum |
"Of the series of horizontal canvases of the Four Evangelists, commissioned by Guercino's Centese patron Domenico Fabri, the St John the Evangelist [directly above, reproduced as engraving] was painted in 1621, before Guercino's departure for Rome, according to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, and the other three were completed in the last months of 1623, immediately after his return. . . . The attribution of the Four Evangelists remains vexed. Giuseppina Magnanimi upheld the autograph status of the St Matthew (and by implication the others), while [Denis] Mahon, [Rossella] Vodret and others described the four pictures . . . as good studio copies after lost originals by Guercino."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Presentation in the Temple 1623 oil on copper National Gallery, London |
"Malvasia stated that the [Presentation in the Temple] was made in 1623, on Guercino's return from Rome, for Domenico Fabri, the patron of the Four Evangelists and a member of the same Centese family who had supported the artist before his transfer to Rome. . . . Mahon noted that the disposition of the figures is much closer to Domenichino's fresco of the Death of St Cecilia [directly below] in S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, than it is to any other of Guercino's early works. The composition unfolds frontally, within a solid architectural framework of ordered horizontal and vertical planes. The colours, though rich and bright, harmonize with this more transparently clear vision, free of the usual strong contrasts of light and dark. Guercino continued his debt to Ferrarese painting, adapting the figure of the kneeling woman in the right foreground of Scarsellino's Birth of the Virgin of 1607 [also below] in the Galleria Estense, Modena.
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| Domenichino Death of St Cecilia 1614 fresco Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome |
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| Scarsellino Birth of the Virgin 1607 oil on canvas Galleria Estense, Modena |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Assumption of the Virgin 1623 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean-Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non after Guercino Assumption of the Virgin 1772 etching and aquatint Harvard Art Museums |
"Among the works Guercino painted when he returned home from Rome, according to Malvasia, was 'un Assunzione della B.V. con dodici Apostoli al Sig. Co[nte] Alessandro Tanara'. Conte Tanari was the papal treasurer of Bologna who had commissioned the now lost fresco decoration of Hercules and the Hydra on the façade of his palace in Bologna. The Assumption remained in the possession of his descendants until sold by them in 1842 to P.I. Krivtsov (1806-44), agent of Emperor Nicholas I (1796-1855), on behalf of the Hermitage, whose collection it entered the following year. . . . The figure [below] is a reduction, based on the figure of St. John in the lower right of the Hermitage picture, except that there the saint stares pensively into the vacant tomb instead of reading from a book, as here."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Kneeling St John the Evangelist, Reading 1623 oil on canvas (monochrome photograph by Fratelli Alinari) Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Penitent Magdalene ca. 1623 oil on copper private collection |
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| by or after Guercino Self Portrait ca. 1623 oil on canvas Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
"This is the most celebrated likeness of Guercino, whose features have been transmitted through the centuries by engravings after this portrait [as below] more than any other. Again, its status is held in doubt, partly because of its poor condition."
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| Pietro Antonio Pazzi after Guercino Self-Portrait ca. 1740 engraving Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)