Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino (Cento 1591-1666 Bologna)

Saint John the Baptist, half-length, looking up to the right, holding a bowl

Details

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino (Cento 1591-1666 Bologna)
Saint John the Baptist, half-length, looking up to the right, holding a bowl
red chalk, watermark armorial
9 3/8 x 7¾ in. (237 x 197 mm.)

Provenance

With P. & D. Colnaghi, London.
Paul H. Ganz, New York.
With Kate Ganz, London, 1987.

Literature

D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draughtsman: Works from North American Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and elsewhere, 1991, pl. B and p. 226, no. 230.

Exhibited

Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Art in Italy: 1600-1700, 1965, no. 110.

Lot Essay

A study, in reverse, for Guercino's picture of Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, datable to circa 1652-55, formerly in Lord Farnham's Collection (L. Salerno, Il Dipinti del Guercino, Rome, 1988, no. 292). Several examples of Guercino's reversing a composition between drawing and picture exist, for instance the drawing of Jacob blessing the Sons of Joseph in the Art Institute of Chicago (D.M. Stone, op. cit., no. 8), which is in the opposite direction to the painting in Sir Denis Mahon's collection (L. Salerno, op. cit., no. 66).

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