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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Coriolanus 1643 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen |
"This is the second painting Guercino supplied to Louis Phélypeaux, Sieur de La Vrillière for the decoration of the gallery of his Paris mansion [the first being the now-lost Offering of Abigail of 1636]. The canvas was altered during the 18th century, when the interior of the hôtel was refurbished after its purchase by Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Comte de Toulouse (1678-1717). The Coriolanus was fitted within a shaped Rococo frame, necessitating the alteration of the canvas at top and bottom.
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Coriolanus (detail) 1643 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Coriolanus 1643 offset drawing (compositional study) Royal Library, Windsor |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Magdalene contemplating the Nails of the Passion 1643 or 1644 oil on canvas private collection, Moscow |
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| John Young after Guercino Magdalene contemplating the Nails of the Passion 1822 etching British Museum |
"[Guercino's Magdalene contemplating the Nails of the Passion] was much admired by its distinguished owners during the 18th and 19th centuries, but downgraded by the middle of the 20th. . . . During the 19th century the picture was in the collection of Sir Philip Miles (1825-88), 2nd Bt, at Leigh Court, Bristol, at whose 1884 sale it was acquired by a certain T.A. Philbrich. Last century it belonged to Dr. M.L. Busch of Huntington Park, CA, who in 1959 donated it to the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, IN, from which it was deaccessioned, appearing in a Christie's sale in 1986 as 'studio of Guercino'."
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| Benedetto Gennari (?) after Guercino Death of Seneca (possible copy of lost painting) after 1643 oil on canvas Palazzo Corsini, Rome |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Death of Seneca (study for lost painting) 1643 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Death of Seneca (study for lost painting) 1643 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Death of Seneca (study for lost painting) 1643 drawing Musée du Louvre |
"In 1643, according to [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia, Guercino painted two different half-length compositions of the death of Seneca. The first, for Cardinal Antonio Barberini (1607-71), is cited as 'un Seneca svenato' (i.e. bleeding). . . . A handful of drawings by Guercino of the dying Seneca, datable from their style in the early 1640s, may be divided into two groups. The first group [all above] possibly for the Barberini picture, shows Seneca standing in a bath with blood spurting from his torso. They include two drawings in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem and one in the Louvre, Paris. The composition of what is regarded as a Guercino school copy [also above] in the Palazzo Corsini, Rome, echoes that of the Haarlem drawing [shown directly beneath it] and it is possible the canvas may reflect Guercino's lost Barberini picture."
"Guercino's second painting of the Death of Seneca painted in 1643 was commissioned by the Roman lawyer Marcantonio Eugeni (1592-1657). . . . Two drawings – in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York [directly below] and the Accademia, Venice – record what may be the second composition of the subject. Here the Roman philosopher and statesman is seated in a bath, his legs bent so that his knees are above the level of his waist. He is beardless and looks directly at the viewer rather than staring at the blood flowing from his body."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Death of Seneca (study for lost painting) 1643 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Christ mourned by the Virgin 1643 oil on canvas (upper section of the canvas is a later addition) Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d'Autun |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Christ mourned by the Virgin 1643 drawing (compositional study) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Christ mourned by the Virgin 1643 drawing (compositional study) Musée du Louvre |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) Christ mourned by the Virgin 1643 drawing (figure studies - Christ) Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
"[Christ mourned by the Virgin was commissioned in 1643 by the French ambassador to Venice. A later Parisian owner sold the painting in 1666] "to the French king for 1500 livres to serve as an altarpiece for the chapel of Saint-Charles in the former royal abbey of Val-de-Grâce, Paris, and this location may explain the picture's subsequent vertical extension, whereby the empty upright of the Cross was inserted into the cloud-filled sky. It was recorded in Val-de-Grâce in 1795, though there was then uncertainty if it were by Guercino or a copy after him by some French imitator, such as Philippe de Champaigne (1602-74). The painting was among the property of the French Crown confiscated when the abbey was de-established during the Revolution, and in 1801 the former altarpiece was sent to Autun from the Dépôt des Augustins at Paris."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) St Paul 1644 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)