Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

The family of the artist's nephews Benedetto and Cesare Gennari, Bologna, until after 1719 (their inscription in brown ink, lower right:10 P^r. Dol.);
Francesco Forni, Bologna;
John Bouverie (died 1750);
by inheritance to his wife, Anne Bouverie (died 1757);
by inheritance to her brother, John Hervey (died 1764);
by inheritance to his son, Christopher Hervey (died 1786);
by inheritance to his aunt, Elizabeth Bouverie (died 1798);
bequeathed to Sir Charles Middleton, later 1st Baron Barham (died 1813); 
thence by inheritance to his grandson, Charles Noel, later 1st Earl of Gainsborough (died 1866);
Archibald G.B. Russell (L. 2770a),
his sale, London, Sotheby's, 22 May 1928, lot 60;
John Nicholas Brown, Providence, R.I.;
with David Tunick Inc., New York;
acquired 1986

London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1925, reproduced pl. 52;
London, Magnasco Society, 1927, no. 6;
London, Royal Academy, Italian Art: 1200-1900, 1930, no. 651a;
Gainesville, et al, 1991-93, no. 20

A. G. B. Russell, Drawings by Guercino, London 1923, reproduced pl. XVII;
T. Borenius (anonymously), 'Drawings in the Collection of Mr Archibald G.B. Russell', in The Connoisseur, vol. LXVI, May 1923, pp. 3-12, reproduced p. 10, no. V;
H. Tietze, European Master Drawings in the United States, New York 1947, no. 56, reproduced;
D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draftsman: Works from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge (Mass.) 1991, p. 233, no. 182 , reproduced pl. E

Laid down. The ink has sunk in the darkest areas of the sheet (behind the ear and on the very top of the head), and there are some cracks and minor losses in these areas as a result. Otherwise the condition is fine: there is a very tiny nick to the right of the centre of the lower edge, two very very tiny holes, one by the Adam's apple, the other above the top of the head. Also some slight discolouration along the left edge. The image itself is still, however, very strong.
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This sheet was once part of the large group of drawings which, on Guercino's death, were inherited by his nephews Benedetto (1633-1715) and Cesare (1637-1688) Gennari. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the drawings passed to Cesare's grandson, Carlo Gennari (1712-1790), by whom the group was dispersed. At this point, many drawings, including this sheet, were obtained by the Bolognese dealer, Francesco Forni, who then sold them to John Bouverie.¹ According to an inventory of the Gennari family's property taken in 1719, prior to the dispersal of the drawings, 1,689 of them were placed in eight large albums, which were organised according to the medium and subject of the drawing.²  One of these albums was entitled Dissegni di Penna, et Acquarella di diverse grandezze, rapresentanti diverse Teste, Figure, e Puttini;  it contained 297 drawings, of which the present study was most probably one.³ 

In Linda Wolk-Simon's entry on this drawing in the catalogue of the 1991-3 Horvitz Collection exhibition, she suggested that it has certain affinities with the kneeling St. Francis in Guercino's altarpiece of 1639-41, which depicts the Madonna and Child with Ss. Francis and Clare (Parma, Galleria Nazionale).⁴  However, since the exhibition catalogue was published, an altarpiece by Guercino has come to light that may provide a stronger connection.  The pala in question, which was documented but thought to have been lost, dates from 1663, and depicts the Madonna and Child appearing to Beato Marcolino Ammani di Forlí: it is to the latter figure that the present study appears to relate.  The painting was discovered by Prisco Bagni, badly damaged and in storage at the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.  It was subsequently cleaned, restored and published by Bagni in 1991 as a late work, dating from 1663.  Before the discovery of the painting, the composition was known, but only from a 1757 engraving by Bolzoni.⁵  Bagni also identified another drawing connected with the painting, a double-sided red chalk sheet, also in the Brera, which has a compositional study on the recto and a study for the kneeling friar on the verso.⁶ 

The present sheet is drawn in a notably different manner from the red chalk drawing: with broad, bold pen and brown ink and wash, rather than the more tentative, loosely sculpted chalk of the double-sided study, which fits with what Nicholas Turner describes as the 'broken contours and lines of fluctuating intensity' of Guercino's late period.⁷  As Turner has also pointed out, the present study, on the other hand, can best be related stylistically to Guercino's drawings of the 1630s, and in particular to certain drawings of half- or bust-length single male figures that he made at this time, such as the Old Bearded Man in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, the Man Reading at a Table, in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Bust of a Man, facing right, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.⁸

This difference in style between the two sheets may confirm Wolk-Simon's hypothesis that the present drawing was not drawn in preparation for a painting, but was instead an 'independent invention', which accounts for the study's highly poetic nature, and the wonderfully broad, fluid manner in which it has been drawn. Indeed, considering it is thought that Guercino drew far less in the 1650s and 60s, and that his doctor had apparently forbidden him from drawing on account of chest pains,⁹ the idea that the artist might have used an earlier design, from one of his most intensive periods of draughtsmanship, as inspiration for his last painting seems both appealing and plausible. 

1. N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, exhibition catalogue, London 1991, p. 8

2. D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, pp.xx-xxi

3. See Gainesville, et al., 1991-93, loc. cit.

4. See D.M. Stone, Guercino: Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1991, cat. no. 165

5. D. Mahon, P. Bagni et al, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino, 1591-1666, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1991, cat. no. 152; the engraving reproduced in P. Bagni's note on the painting in M. Foschi and G. Viroli (eds.), Il San Domenico di Forlí. La chiesa, il luogo, la città, exhibition catalogue, Forlí, Oratorio di San Sebasiano, 1991, pp. 98, 101

6. P. Bagni in Il San Domenico di Forli, exhibition catalogue, op. cit., pp.99-100

7. Turner and Plazzotta, op.cit., p. 181

8. Turner's observations cited by Wolk-Simon in the 1991-3 Horvitz exhibition catalogue, loc. cit. For the three comparable drawings, see, respectively: Mahon and Turner, op. cit., cat. no. 186, fig. 368; D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draftsman: works from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991, cat. no. 79; J. Bean, 17^th-Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1979, cat. no. 246

9. Turner and Plazzotta, op. cit., p.181