Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

Glued at the top and bottom and right margins. Scattered foxing throughout the sheet and light water damage at the top left corner and surface dirt around the margins. Bottom right corner missing. The red chalk is still strong. The drawing is sold mounted and framed in a modern and gilded wooden frame. The mount covers part of the drawing.
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This fine, previously unrecorded drawing is a preparatory study for the reclining figure of Potiphar’s wife in Guercino's painting, Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (fig. 1).¹  According to Malvasia, the painting and its pendant, Amnon and Tamar (also in Washington), were commissioned in 1649 by a patron and friend of Guercino from Reggio Emilia, Aurelio Zanoletti.²  In Guercino's account book, the Libro dei conti, there is an entry for 25th August 1649, recording a payment from Zanoletti to Guercino, for ‘il quadro della fuga di Gioseppe…’.³

This is the only known study by Guercino for the Washington painting, and the position of the figure in the drawing is very close to that seen in the final painted version.  Also very similar are the strongly contrasting areas of light and shadow, which Guercino has achieved here in the drawing just with extremely skilful use of pure red chalk.  Despite the apparently sketchy nature of this rapidly executed drawing, the artist is focusing on the subtly contrasted lighting of the torso and head of Potiphar’s wife.  Guercino employed red chalk with extreme sensibility and variety throughout his career, but especially in his late years his mastery of this medium allowed him to achieve astonishing nuances of tonal range, and intensity in the rendering of the flesh.

A pen and ink drawing by Guercino of the same subject, in the Honolulu Academy of Art (inv. no. 13.427), was mentioned by Salerno in relation to the Washington painting, along with a counterproof, at Windsor (inv. no. 3166), taken from another, lost drawing, but both those drawings have rightly been dated by other scholars, on stylistic grounds, to an earlier period.⁴  They could perhaps relate to another painting of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, until now untraced but documented as having been made for the Duke of Modena in the second half of 1631.⁵

A red chalk compositional study by Guercino relating to the pendant painting, Amnon and Tamar, appeared on the art market in 1988, and is now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.⁶

¹ L. Salerno, I Dipinti del Guercino, Rome 1988, p. 332, no. 261, fig. 261
² Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, Vite de'pittori Bolognesi, Bologna 1841, vol. II, p. 267; Guercino actually made a replica for his friend Zanoletti of the pendant Amnon and Tamar. According to Malvasia the first version went to Girolamo Bavosi, in Venice
³ B. Ghelfi, Il Libro dei conti di Guercino 1629-1666, Venice 1997, p. 143 , no. 408
⁴ D.M. Stone, Guercino Master Draftsman, Padua 1991, pp. 72-77, no. 29, reproduced p. 73;
⁵ Ibid., pp. 75-76
⁶ Inv. no. 1989.14.1; ibid., p. 237, pl. I, reproduced fig. 166