Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

Study of Two Female Saints in Prayer

Auction Closed

January 27, 05:29 PM GMT

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Estate of an Important Midwest Collector

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna

Study of Two Female Saints in Prayer

Red chalk

195 by 200 mm; 7 ¾ by 7 ⅞ in

Mrs. Eric van Noorden,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, Master Drawings and Sculpture, 1989, no. 31

D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draftsman: Works from North American Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge (Mass.) 1991, pp. 226-7, no. 241, reproduced plate C

As noted by David Stone (see Literature) two copies of this delicate red chalk drawing are recorded. The first is in the Uffizi, Florence,¹ and the second was on the London art market in 1933.² These two copies show a fractionally more complete composition to the lower edge of the sheet, with the female Saints kneeling full-length before a crucifix lying on an open book, thus confirming that the present sheet must have been fractionally cut at an early stage in its existence.

Stone proposes a dating to the 1650s, whilst suggesting that the two female figures were perhaps preparatory for an altarpiece depicting the Crucifixion, or the Entombment.

1. M. Marangoni, Guercino: I Grandi Maestri del Disegno, Milan 1959, no. 58, reproduced

2. With R.E.A. Wilson, London, 1933