Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

With Baskett and Day, London, 1971 (exh. cat. November-December 1971, no. 16);
sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 14 January 1986, lot 82;
Private collection, England

Laid down. Some light scattered foxing in the upper half of the sheet, barely visible. Some light brown stains at the lower right corner. There are a number of small holes that have been made up, the majority are located at the lower left margin, there are also two more small holes further up the left margin, in her garment. Red chalk remains fresh and overall image strong.
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This elegant red chalk study of Saint Cecilia playing the organ is one of several drawings that Guercino executed depicting the patron saint of music and musicians.  Mahon and Turner, writing about a pen and ink study of Saint Cecilia in the Royal Collection at Windsor, mention that during the 1640s the artist received three separate commissions for Saint Cecilia compositions.¹  Two of these paintings are, however, lost;  the third is possibly the painting now in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in which the saint is shown in the opposite direction to the present study.²  Another red chalk study of Saint Cecilia is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; that study shows the saint sitting in the same direction as in the Dulwich painting, but with the inclusion of a small angel standing nearby.³  Our version of Saint Cecilia is more finished in comparison with the Metropolitan study, which is rather looser it handling. 

Stylistically the present drawing must belong to the latter part of Guercino’s career.  It could very well have been made around the time when the artist received payment for the third of his recorded Saint Cecilia commisions (30 September 1648 and 4 January 1650), and so this drawing can possibly be considered a preparatory study for the Dulwich painting.

1.  D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, p. 61, cat. no. 105, reproduced pl. 110
2.  Poesia e Sentimento nella pittura del ‘600, exhib. cat., Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2004, p. 180, cat. no. 45, reproduced.
3.  J. Bean, 17^th Century Italian Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1979, cat. no. 242, reproduced