Monday, May 17, 2021

Guercino in Cento - 1642

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules Carrying his Club on his Shoulder
1642
oil on canvas (trial version)
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules Carrying his Club on his Shoulder
1642
drawing (compositional study)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules Carrying his Club on his Shoulder
1642
drawing (compositional study)
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Hercules Carrying his Club on his Shoulder
1642
oil on canvas (finished version)
Banco Popolare dell'Emilia Romagna, Modena

"[Miriam] Di Penta assumed that the Hercules [above], commissioned as a pair with the Queen Artemisia [below], was sent to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, but was intended to extol the military prowess of the Cardinal's brother Taddeo (whose engagement in the Castro war in Ferrara was compared in contemporary literature to a 'Hercules armed with an iron club').  Both paintings feature in Barberini inventories of 1692 and 1738."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Queen Artemisia
(lost painting)
1642
drawing (compositional study)
private collection

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Queen Artemisia
(lost painting)
1642
offset of lost drawing
Royal Library, Windsor

by or after Guercino
St Cecilia
1642
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"[Arnauld] Brejon de Lavergnée and [Nathalie] Volle politely dismissed [the St Cecilia] as the work of a secondary member of the Bolognese school, influenced by Guercino, adding that the knotted curtain by the organ is red and that the canvas has been repainted.  Two years later [in 1990] it was included as by Guercino in the Louvre's exhibition Le Guerchin en France, curated by Stéphane Loire, identified as probably the painting paid for in 1642 by Charles Lumague 'di Parigi', brother of Barthélemy, who commissioned [Christ appearing to St Teresa in 1634].  Loire's attribution of the painting was supported by [David] Stone, who reproduced the picture in colour in his monograph [1991]."

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Flora
1642
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rospigliosi, Rome

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Flora
1642
drawing (drapery study)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Flora
1642
offset drawing (compositional study)
private collection

Francesco Bartolozzi after Guercino
Flora
1764
etching after Guercino drawing
British Museum

Francesco Bartolozzi after Guercino
Flora
1764
intaglio print after Guercino drawing
British Museum

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Flora
1642
drawing (compositional study)
Royal Library, Windsor

Francesco Bartolozzi after Guercino
Flora
1764
etching after Guercino drawing
British Museum

"In 1642, according to Malvasia, Guercino painted 'una Primavera con diversi amori' for 'Sig. Gio. Orio di Rimini', for which he was paid 190 ducats (258 scudi) on 9 July 1642.  As Francesco Arcangeli noted, the flowers were clearly painted by Guercino's brother, Paolo Antonio, who had already executed some still lives for the same patron.  The painting was listed as by Guercino in the inventory of Duke Giambattista Rospigliosi (1646-1722) of 1713."

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