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

Cleopatra bitten by the Asp

Details

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino (Cento 1591-1666 Bologna)
Cleopatra bitten by the Asp
red chalk, watermark Barberini arms with cardinal's hat
8½ x 8 in. (217 x 203 mm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 8 July 1975, lot 28.
With Herman Shickman, New York, 1976.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 22 January 2004, lot 37.

Literature

C. van Tuyll, Guercino Drawings from Dutch Collections, exhib. cat., Haarlem, Teylers Museum, 1991, under no. 54.
D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draughtsman: Works from North American Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge, Mass., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, and elsewhere, 1991, p. xix, pl. XIII, and p. 226, no. 227.
P. Boccardo, Genova e Guercino, exhib. cat., Genoa, Palazzo Rosso, 1992, p. 76.
B. Ghelfi, Il libro dei conti del Guercino 1629-1666, Bologna, 1997, p. 138, n. 387.

Exhibited

Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, Disegni, 1991, no. 138.

Lot Essay

A study for Guercino's painting of The Death of Cleopatra now in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (L. Salerno, Il Dipinti del Guercino, Rome, 1988, no. 252). It is almost certainly the 'Quadro di Cleopatra' for which Guercino's account books record that the Abbate Carlo Emanuele Durazzo on 24 March 1648 paid 125 ducatoni (B. Ghelfi, op. cit., p. 138, no. 387). Guercino painted another version of the subject, now lost, for which he was paid on 8 March 1650 (B. Ghelfi, op. cit., p. 146, no. 420). Although there are small differences between the drawing and the picture, Sir Denis Mahon considers the drawing preparatory for the 1648 picture rather than that of 1650 (D. Mahon, op. cit., p. 213).
Another drawing of the subject, in pen and brown ink, was in the Stichting Collectie P. en N. de Boer, Christie's, London, 4 July 1995, lot 55 (C. van Tuyll, op. cit., no. 54).

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