Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness

According to the Gospels, Saint John the Baptist was the precursor and forerunner of Christ and the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah. When questioned by a group of priests and Levites sent to ask him who he was, Saint John famously denied being the Messiah, replying instead ‘I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Make straight the way for the Lord.”’ (John 1:23). Baptism was central to his messianic movement; the prominent inclusion of the spout of water spilling from the rock into his raised bowl was almost certainly intended to allude to his future participation in the Baptism of Christ, an event relayed in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, as well as to the Gospel tradition that he drank only water during his period in the wilderness.
This monumental canvas of Saint John the Baptist is recorded by Guercino’s earliest biographer, Carlo Malvasia, as having been painted in 1652 as one of a series to decorate the artist’s own home in Bologna ('Fece ancora altre pitture per casa propria, come si vedrà à suo luogo'; 'He also made other pictures for his own house, as one will see in his house'; C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice: vite de pittori bolognesi, Bologna, 1678, II, p. 379; C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice: vite de pittori bolognesi, Bologna, 1842, II, p. 269). Guercino had moved to the city from his native Cento following the death of Guido Reni in 1642 and had quickly established himself as Bologna’s leading artist. Two years later, in 1644, he purchased the house at the intersection of the via Albiroli and the via Albari, which came to be known as the Casa Gennari after being inherited by the artist's nephews and heirs, the painters Cesare and Benedetto Gennari. It was there, in 1652, that he painted the group of four penitent saints referred to by Malvasia as ‘Quattro quadri grandi di Santi penitenti Madalena, Paolo Eremita, Gio. Battista, e Girolamo, d’estrema bellezza’ (‘Four paintings of penitent saints Magdalen, Paul the Hermit, Saint John, and Jerome, of extreme beauty’) in a ‘Nota delle Pitture restate in Casa dipinte in diversi tempi’ (‘Note on the Pictures remaining in the House, painted at various times’; op. cit., 1678, II, p. 384; op. cit., 1842, II, p. 273). In an entry only two lines below, Malvasia recorded a seemingly unrelated ‘S. Gio Battista nel deserto figura intiera’ (‘Saint John the Baptist in the desert, full-length’; op. cit., 1678, II, p. 384; op. cit. 1841, II, p. 273). However, it is now believed that the reference was made in error and that the two pictures of Saint John are one and the same (D. Mahon, M. Pulini and V. Sgarbi, eds., Guercino: Poesia e Sentimento nella Pittura del '600, Milan, 2003, p. 266, no. 93).
Following the artist’s death in 1666, Saint John the Baptist remained in the house until at least the early 18th century. It was recorded along with the Saint Mary Magdalen in the Desert and the Saint Paul the Hermit in the 1719 inventory of the contents of Casa Gennari made four years after the death of Guercino’s nephew and heir, Benedetto Gennari. The present painting was listed as no. 4 and described as being prominently hung in what was probably the most important room in the house, the ‘Sala Grande che guarde nella Piazzola di S. Nicolo’ (‘Great Hall that looks onto the Piazzola di San Nicolo’; MS. Inventory, Casa Gennari, 31 October 1719). By the beginning of the 19th century the painting was in England. It appeared at Christie’s, London, on 17 April 1812, consigned by a ‘Lord Brownlow’, who must surely be identified as John Cust, 2nd Baron Brownlow, who died in 1853. By 1968 the painting was part of the collection of Barry Maxwell, 12th Baron Farnham, who had inherited it from his predecessors. The first Lord Farnham to have owned the painting was likely John James Farnham, 4th Baron Farnham, who died in 1823.
Two of the three other saints in the series are located: the Saint Paul (fig. 1) and the Magdalen (fig. 2) are both in the collection of the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (D. Mahon, M. Pulini and V. Sgarbi, eds., Guercino: poesia e sentimento nella pittura del ‘600, Milan, 2003, nos. 95 and 94 respectively; inv. nos. 6604 and 6605). The fourth picture in the series, The Vision of Saint Jerome, is known today only through copies. One of these is part of a set of smaller-scale reproductions of the whole series, also in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (81.5 x 130 cm.; inv. no. 1000; L. Salerno, I dipinti del Guercino, Rome, 1988, p. 364, no. 295); another is in the Museo Diocesano, Imola together with a copy of Saint Paul the Hermit (inv. no. 52). The original painting of The Vision of Saint Jerome must have been separated from the group early on, probably in the period between the death of Guercino and that of his nephew, since it is the only picture from the set not included in the 1719 inventory of the house.
The head of Saint John is reminiscent of a small, fragmentary, red-chalk drawing of a Head of a bearded young man, looking upwards at in the Tylers Museum, Haarlem (fig. 3) and a double-sided sheet showing the same figure at Windsor Castle (C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, Guercino (1591-1666): Drawings from Dutch Collections, The Hague, 1990, p. 170, no. 75; and D. Mahon and N. Turner, The drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge and New York, 1989, p. 99, no. 229).