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Lot Essay
Although the present lot was published as an autograph work by the late Stephen Pepper (op. cit., p. 272, no. 155, pl. 181), it is now generally considered to be a product of the artist's studio. A related but slightly smaller work, which Pepper lists as a studio variant, is in the Methuen collection at Corsham Court.
According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni's first biographer, in order to satisfy the demand for his work, the artist ran one of the largest and most prodigious studios in Europe. During his last sojourn in Rome he had sixty pupils working for him and he is believed to have employed up to eighty in his studio in Bologna in the 1620s. As a result, it has been historically difficult to assess the degree of the artist's own involvement in a large amount of the work that emanated from his studio. Distinctions between autograph works, retouched compositions or ritocchi and good copies by pupils or assistants were often deliberately blurred.
The present work once formed part of the renowned collection of the Florentine Marchese Gerini. Other paintings from the Gerini collection include a Penitent Saint Peter by Guercino (lot 282 in the same 1825 sale as the present picture), now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; a Martyrdom of Saint Andrew by Carlo Dolci in the Galleria Palatina, Florence; and a Saint Mary of Egypt by Jusepe de Ribera in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier; and a Holy Family with a Lamb by Raphael, possibly the version in a private collection, Vaduz.
According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni's first biographer, in order to satisfy the demand for his work, the artist ran one of the largest and most prodigious studios in Europe. During his last sojourn in Rome he had sixty pupils working for him and he is believed to have employed up to eighty in his studio in Bologna in the 1620s. As a result, it has been historically difficult to assess the degree of the artist's own involvement in a large amount of the work that emanated from his studio. Distinctions between autograph works, retouched compositions or ritocchi and good copies by pupils or assistants were often deliberately blurred.
The present work once formed part of the renowned collection of the Florentine Marchese Gerini. Other paintings from the Gerini collection include a Penitent Saint Peter by Guercino (lot 282 in the same 1825 sale as the present picture), now in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; a Martyrdom of Saint Andrew by Carlo Dolci in the Galleria Palatina, Florence; and a Saint Mary of Egypt by Jusepe de Ribera in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier; and a Holy Family with a Lamb by Raphael, possibly the version in a private collection, Vaduz.