Giovanni Francesco Barbieri GUERCINO

As Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner have noted, ‘Pen and ink was perhaps Guercino’s most natural medium of expression. This technique more than any other allowed for rapidity of execution, but it also required great presence of mind, since the possibility of correcting what had been drawn before was of course limited. It thus gave scope to Guercino’s spontaneity, a quality so evident in his drawings but less apparent in the more formal process of painting. In his pen studies he combined the expansive movements of the free drawing of some parts with the tighter rhythms of the more measured drawing of others; in these more controlled passages he picked out certain details with the utmost care. Such contrasts in the pace of the line can be seen in practically all his drawings in the medium.’

Datable to the second half of the 1640s, this highly finished drawing does not appear to be related to any extant painting by Guercino, and as such its purpose is difficult to determine. As Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta have written of Guercino’s drawings of the 1640s, ‘The drawings in this decade, especially those in pen and ink, are surprisingly uninhibited compared with the disciplined finish of the pictures for which many are preparatory. Characteristic of the pen drawings of this moment is an almost heavy-handed line, accompanied by equally emphatic passages of cross hatching.’

Among stylistically comparable drawings of this period is a compositional study at Holkham Hall in Norfolk for a 1646 easel painting of Samson and Delilah, and a drawing of A Pope and a Bearded Saint Conversing at Windsor Castle, which is a study for an altarpiece of All Saints in Glory, commissioned from Guercino in 1645 and completed two years later.