Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

Padre Sebastiano Resta (1635-1714);
Giovanni Maria Marchetti, Bishop of Arezzo (died 1704);
John Lord Somers (L.2981; the Resta-Somers numbering d.79);
Jonathan Richardson Senior (L.2184);
Thomas Hudson (L.2432);
Sir Joshua Reynolds (L.2364, partly cut off);
The Rt. Hon. Lord Nathan of Churt,
his sale and others, London, Sotheby's, 21 May 1963, lot 140;
sale, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 1987, lot 59, purchased by a European private collector,
by inheritance to the present owner

Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, 1591-1666, I Disegni (catalogue by Sir Denis Mahon), 1992, p. 299, no. 193, reproduced fig. 193

C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, review of the Bologna, Cento and Frankfurt Guercino exhibitions, The Burlington Magazine, December 1991, p. 868 (as Pierfrancesco Mola)

Window mounted. Generally in good condition and media fresh. All corners cut. A tear repaired on the lower margin to the right. Some very small grey spots at the top, and little, very slight foxing, scattered around the sheet. Sold mounted and framed in a modern gilded wooden frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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For the majority of his caricatures Guercino chose to use the fluent and expressive medium of pen and ink, but here, in this beautifully spontaneous caricature of a shoemaker, he drew in red chalk, a medium that he frequently employed in drawings of other types, but only very rarely in his genre drawings or caricatures.¹  The shoemaker is brilliantly depicted holding one shoe in each hand, and smiling knowingly at the viewer, whose identity it is left to us to deduce. Perhaps this ‘client’ was the painter himself?  

With his seemingly direct yet somehow introspective gaze, the subject of this drawing is rather comparable to that of another of Guercino’s red chalk portraits, depicting a fruit vendor, in a private collection.²  In his entry for the present sheet in the 1991 Bologna exhibition catalogue, Sir Denis Mahon pointed out that the traditional attribution to Guercino was already recorded in the inventory compiled for the Bishop Marchetti by Padre Sebastiano Resta, where the drawing was described as: 'Calzolaro del Guercino' (‘Guercino’s shoemaker’).  Guercino lived until Resta was 31 years old, so the latter would surely have been very familiar with the famous Bolognese artist’s graphic style.  In 1991 the traditional attribution was, however, challenged by Carel van Tuyll, who suggested the drawing might in fact be by Pier Francesco Mola (see Literature), and at the time this suggestion was also supported by Nicholas Turner. 

As Sir Denis Mahon noted, however, in his 1992 catalogue entry (see Exhibited), Mola was in fact very influenced by Guercino’s graphic style, and Nicholas Turner has recently informed us that he has been rethinking this attribution to Mola for some time, and on the basis of both the stylistic evidence and the traditional identification, he now believes this sheet to be by Guercino himself.  Carel van Tuyll has also recanted on his previous attribution to Mola, and has kindly pointed out that the present drawing must once have been pressed up against an unpublished Guercino school drawing of The Holy Family with St. John, in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, as a faint offset of the shoemaker is visible on the Haarlem drawing, and a correspondingly faint offset of the figure of the Christ Child appears towards the bottom right corner of the present sheet.

The very distinguished provenance of this outstanding caricature begins with Padre Resta (1635-1714), an energetic collector of drawings who was a pivotal figure in the Roman artistic world for half a century, following his move to the city in 1661.  Resta’s first documented acquisition was a cartoon by Ciro Ferri, purchased in 1662, and at some point not long afterwards, he compiled no fewer than sixteen albums of drawings, for Giovanni Matteo Marchetti, Bishop of Arezzo.  This drawing is surely one of those that was included in one of Resta’s volumes, which were put on the market by his heirs after the bishop's death in 1704, and eventually sold to John, Lord Somers, who took them to England in 1711.

While it was in the Richardson collection, this drawing was engraved, in reverse, by Arthur Pond.

^1. See for instance D. Mahon and N. Turner, The drawings of Guercino, in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, no. 325, reproduced pl. 292, and nos. 340 and 341, reproduced pls. 305-306

^2. D. Stone, Guercino Master Draftsman, exh. cat., Cambride, Mass., Harvard University Art Museums, et al., 1991, p. 225, no. 222, reproduced pl. P, fig. 222 Haarlem, Teylers Museum, inv. no. H 31