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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Agony in the Garden ca. 1627-28 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Agony in the Garden ca. 1627-28 drawing (head study - Angel) Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
"The [Agony in the Garden] once decorated an altar in the convent church of S. Margherita, Bologna. . . . Carel van Tuyll identified a red chalk drawing of the head of a youth [directly above] on the recto of a double-sided sheet in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, as a study, in reverse, for the angel in the Agony in the Garden. . . . [The painting] has had a chequered history since the early 19th century. When the church was closed in 1808, the picture was sold to a Bolognese painter, passing soon afterwards to England. In 1959, it was presented to the Bob Jones University Museum, but was subsequently acquired by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, which, in its turn, sold it in 1999. During its more recent peregrinations, the canvas was, bizarrely, laid down onto a support of sheet metal and the painting severely over restored."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Portrait of Francesco Righetti ca. 1626-28 oil on canvas Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi, Ferrara |
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| Johann Nepomuk Muxel after Guercino Portrait of Francesco Righetti 1835 engraving British Museum |
"Francesco Righetti (1595-1673) was one of the most eminent lawyers of his time in Cento, the author of several legal textbooks and a member of the Consiglio della Comunità di Cento (1626-32). He was the son of Ludovico Righetti and Caterina Pannini, both from distinguished Centese families. His mother's family had employed Guercino in 1615-17 to decorate their house in Cento, the Casa Pannini. Links between Guercino, the Righetti and the Gennari were apparently strong. . . . Portraying a sitter from the professional classes rather than one from an ecclesiastical or aristocratic background was exceptional in Guercino's limited activity as a portraitist."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Martyrdom of St James the Apostle 1627 drawing (compositional study for lost painting) Musée du Louvre |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Martyrdom of St James the Apostle 1627 drawing (compositional study for lost painting) Musée du Louvre |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Martyrdom of St James the Apostle 1627 drawing (compositional study for lost painting) Royal Library, Windsor |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Martyrdom of St James the Apostle 1627 drawing (compositional study for lost painting) Royal Library, Windsor |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino Martyrdom of St James the Apostle 1628 engraving (after lost painting) Philadelphia Museum of Art |
"[Carlo Cesare] Malvasia was precise in saying that following Guercino's return to Piacenza in 1627 and after have finished work on the Cathedral decorations, he began painting the lost altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St James the Apostle, commissioned from him by the 'Signori Perini of Reggio'. They were the brothers Antonio and Ambrogio Prini, and the painting was intended to decorate their new chapel, the second on the right of SS. Pietro and Prospero, Reggio Emilia. It is likely Guercino delivered the completed picture in November of the same year. [Giuseppe] Campori reported that by the mid-19th century the altarpiece was in poor condition. Only five years later Prospero Fantuzzi reported that it had been replaced by a 'new' picture of St James and Philip by the young Tommaso Ottavi. . . . Guercino's ruined canvas, whose appearance is known from Pasqualini's reversed engraving of 1628 [directly above] must have been destroyed to make way for its substitute."
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| anonymous copyist after Guercino Blessed Felix of Cantalice resuscitating a Child ca. 1627-28 workshop copy of Guercino drawing (compositional study for lost painting) Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino Blessed Felix of Cantalice resuscitating a Child 1629 engraving (after lost painting) British Museum |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Return of the Prodigal Son ca. 1627-28 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
"Compared with Guercino's earlier treatment of the subject in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna [1619], the three figures are more separated and their movements noticeably calmer. Some of the pictorial effects are more painstaking than before, such as the circular reflections cast by the round panes of glass resembling bottle glass. The Borghese painting was long in the possession of the Lancellotti family. They are named as its owners in Cunego's engraving of 1770 [directly below]. On 4 December 1818, Prince Camillo Borghese, husband of Pauline Bonaparte and Napoleon's brother-in-law, paid 3,000 scudi for the canvas as part of an attempt to restore the collection's representation of Emilian painting. The family's collection of antiquities and Old Master paintings had suffered from French confiscations during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy, as well as from sales by the Prince's predecessor, Marcantonio IV Borghese (1730-1809)."
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| Domenico Cunego after Guercino Return of the Prodigal Son 1770 engraving Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Thomas Rowlandson after Guercino Return of the Prodigal Son ca. 1783-85 hand-colored etching Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| anonymous copyists after Guercino Return of the Prodigal Son 1967 postage stamp Republic of San Marino |
– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)