Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino

Dan Fellows Platt (L.750a)

Framed. The paper is yellowed, with marks at the edges from the present (acid) mount. There is a tiny hole and ink spot in the lower center, but no other marks. The chalk still strong.
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This very attractive study does not seem to be connected to any known painting by Guercino. Nicholas Turner has kindly endorsed the attribution and has pointed out that similar youths seen in dramatic lighting can be found in Guercino's oeuvre. One in profile appears in the Concert with Four Youths singing, Watched by an Old Man, at Windsor Castle.¹  An equivalent study in pen and ink, with a similar dramatic effect of light and shade playing across the face, is a study of a girl looking down, also at Windsor Castle.²  On stylistic grounds, Turner suggests a possible date for the present drawing of around 1630.

1. See D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, no. 280, reproduced pl. 257
2. Ibid., no. 313, pl. 282