Giovanni Francesco Barbieri GUERCINO

The medium of red chalk, which he exploited with great skill to achieve subtle gradations of texture and tone, was an essential part of Guercino’s draughtsmanship for most of his career. After his return to Bologna from Rome in 1623 the artist began to use the medium regularly, usually to further study the pose of a figure once the initial compositional studies in pen and ink had been completed. In his handling of red chalk, he was particularly influenced by the drawings of Annibale Carracci and, from an even earlier generation of Emilian artists, Correggio. (Indeed, he appears to have owned drawings by both of these artists.) As Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta have noted, ‘Guercino was…skilled in the use of red chalk, obtaining with it many outstanding effects. Red chalk limits the draughtsman to a narrower tonal range than black chalk or pen and wash, but it facilitates more subtle gradations within the range; it also provides an attractively warm hue, which Guercino exploited to the full to bring his figures to life in all their sensuousness.’ As his career progressed, his use of red chalk became more frequent, especially from the 1650s onwards. 

Datable to the late 1630s or the 1640s, this highly finished drawing in red chalk does not have the appearance of being a preparatory study for a painting. Instead, it is likely to have been intended as an autonomous work of art, as is further suggested by the drawn framing lines in red chalk. Such finished drawings in this attractive medium were certainly popular with later collectors. As the 19th century picture restorer Frederick Peter Seguier noted, in his Dictionary of the Works of Painters, published in 1870, ‘Guercino was a good draughtsman, and his sketches in red chalk are favourites with collectors.’

In terms of subject, medium and style, this drawing can be likened to an equally finished red chalk study of The Virgin and Child with a Book and a Pot of Pinks of c.1635-1638, in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. A counterproof of the Morgan drawing is in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, which was in turn used as a model for an undated engraving by Francesco Curti.