Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Il Guercino (‘the squinter’) because he was cross-eyed, was by the second decade of the 17th century one of the foremost painters in the province of Emilia. Born in Cento, a small town between Bologna and Ferrara, Guercino was, in his early work, strongly influenced by the paintings of Ludovico Carracci. In 1617 he was summoned to Bologna by Alessandro Ludovisi, the Cardinal Archbishop of Bologna, and there painted a number of important altarpieces, typified by the Saint William Receiving the Monastic Habit, painted in 1620 and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. When Ludovisi was elected Pope Gregory XV in 1621, Guercino was summoned to Rome to work for the pontiff and his nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi. It was in Rome that Guercino painted some of his most celebrated works, notably the ceiling fresco of Aurora in the Casino Ludovisi and the large altarpiece of The Burial and Reception into Heaven of Saint Petronilla for an altar in Saint Peter’s. The papacy of Gregory XV was short-lived, however, and on the death of the Pope in 1623 Guercino returned to his native Cento, though he continued to receive commissions from patrons throughout Italy and beyond. He remained working in Cento for twenty years, turning down offers of employment at the royal courts in London and Paris. Following the death of Guido Reni in 1642, Guercino moved his studio to Bologna, where he received commissions for religious pictures of the sort that Reni had specialized in, and was soon established as the city’s leading painter.
Although it never really replaced pen and ink as his preferred medium, red chalk was a staple of Guercino’s draughtsmanship, wherein he was particularly influenced by the drawings of Correggio. After his return to Bologna from Rome in 1623 Guercino began to use red chalk regularly, usually to further study the pose of a figure once the initial composition drawings in pen and ink had been completed. As his career progressed, however, his use of red chalk became even more frequent, especially from the 1650’s onwards. Although he remained very busy with commissions until his death in 1666, he seems to have drawn much less, and only a comparatively few drawings - many of which are in red chalk - survive from his last fifteen years of his career.
The present sheet may be grouped with a series of preparatory studies for a now-lost painting of Sisyphus painted by Guercino for Count Girolamo Ranuzzi of Bologna in 1636. The painting is described as ‘una figura di un Sisifo’ in the artist’s account book, the libro dei conti, which further notes the sum of 100 ducatoni paid by Ranuzzi on the 28th of October 1636 (1). The price paid for the picture would suggest that the figure of Sisyphus was almost certainly depicted full-length.
Several other drawings of this subject by Guercino are known, all of which may be supposed to be studies for the lost Ranuzzi canvas. Closest in composition to the present sheet is a pen and wash drawing in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (2), which shows Sisyphus supporting the boulder on his back and moving towards the left. Other drawings of this subject show further variations in the pose and direction of Sisyphus. These include a pen and wash study in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (3), which alone among the other drawings of this subject does not show Sisyphus carrying the boulder on his back or pushing it up a hill, but rather lifting it from the ground with both hands. Another pen drawing, in the Suida-Manning Collection at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas (4), shows Sisyphus turned to the right. A double-sided black chalk drawing, showing an unbearded figure of Sisyphus, is in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem (5). Two further drawings of this subject appeared on the art market in London in the early 1970’s; a pen study exhibited at Colnaghi in 1970 (6) and another sold at auction the following year (7).
Guercino seems to have returned to this figure type some ten years later, in 1646, when he was commissioned to paint an Atlas for Don Lorenzo de’ Medici; the painting is now in the Museo Bardini in Florence (8).
Notes
1. Barbara Ghelfi, Il libro dei conti del Guercino, Bologna, 1997, p.83, no.134.
2. Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1989, p.49, no.84, pl.88; Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, London, 1991, p.135, no.108, illustrated in colour pl.16.
3. Turner and Plazzotta, ibid., pp.134-135, no.107.
4. Mahon and Turner, op.cit., p.50, under no.84, fig.17; David M. Stone, Guercino: Master Draftsman. Works from North American Collections, exhibition catalogue, Cambridge, MA and elsewhere, 1991, pp.92-93, no.38.
5. Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken, Guercino (1591-1666): Drawings from Dutch Collections, exhibition catalogue, Haarlem, Teyler Museum, 1991, pp.102-103, no.37; Sir Denis Mahon, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino: Disegni, exhibition catalogue, Bologna, 1991, pp.142-144, no.88.
6. London, P. & D. Colnaghi, Exhibition of Old Master and English Drawings, 1970, no.22. The drawing, formerly in the collections of Robert Laurent of Indiana and Mr. and Mrs. Lester Avnet of New York, reappeared on the art market in 2001 (Munich and London, Katrin Bellinger Kunsthandel, Master Drawings, 2001, no.10.)
7. Anonymous sale, London, Christie’s, 23 November 1971, lot 72 (bt. Rogers for 620 gns.); Illustrated in Stone, op.cit., p.92, under no.38, fig.38a.
8. Sir Denis Mahon, Guercino: Master Painter of the Baroque, exhibition catalogue, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 1992, pp.268-270, no.41
