In a letter to the previous owner, Nicholas Turner, endorsed the attribution to Guercino, on the basis of a digital image, and has recently kindly confirmed his earlier opinion.¹ Turner remarks that the present sheet was likely a preparatory study for Guercino's altarpiece of the Annunciation, painted in 1646 for the Church of S. Maria Maggiore at Pieve di Cento (fig. 1).¹ Turner also points out another sketch of the Virgin reading, more cursorily drawn than the present rather finished study, housed in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, which he believes to represent an earlier stage in the development of Guercino's painted figure.² He comments on the minimal compositional differences between the drawings, in which both Madonnas are very similarly posed, and only the placement of the book is altered.

1. Email of 11 April 2022

2. N. Turner, The Paintings of Guercino, A revised and expanded catalogue raisonné, Rome 2017, p. 618, no. 326, reproduced

2. D. Mahon & N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, no. 123, reproduced pl. 129