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Lot Essay
This fine drawing is a preparatory study for a painting commissioned from Guercino in 1639 by the Marchese Cornelio II Bentivoglio as a gift to Cardinal Jules Mazarin. The painting is recorded in Guercino’s account book, the Libro dei Conti, under the title Carità Romana (Roman Charity), noting a payment of 66 scudi for the work (B. Ghelfi, Il libro dei conti del Guercino 1629-1666, Bologna, 1997, pp. 98-99, no. 204). The subject of Roman Charity derives from the writings of Valerius Maxiumus who recounts the story of the elderly Cimon imprisoned and condemned to die by starvation. To save him, his daughter Pero secretly breastfed him in prison, an act celebrated as the ultimate expression of filial devotion and charity. Long thought to be lost, Guercino’s painting has recently been identified by Nicholas Turner with a canvas in the Schoeppler collection in London (N. Turner, The Paintings of Guercino. A Revised and Expanded Catalogue raisonné, Rome, 2017, p. 542, no. 251, ill.).
At least four other drawings of this subject by Guercino are known: a pen and ink study in a private collection in Germany (H.-P. Wipplinger, ed., Die Sammlung Klüser. Zurück in die Zukunft: Zeichnungen von Tiepolo bis Warhol / Back to the Future: Drawings from Tiepolo to Warhol. The Klüser Collection, exh. cat., Krems, Kunsthalle, 2014, p. 31); another drawing in the same technique sold at Christie’s, London, 19 April 1994, lot 62; a third sheet, formerly in the collections of Padre Sebastiano Resta, Lord Somers and Richard Houlditch Jr., sold in Paris in 2019 (Sotheby’s, Paris, 28 March 2019, lot 103). A further red chalk study, reversing the composition so that Cimon appears on the right and Pero on the left, from the H. S. Reitlinger's collection was sold at Sotheby’s in London, 9 December 1953, lot 58.
A reworked offset or counterproof of this drawing is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (inv. RCIN 902573). Since the album of counterproofs of Guercino drawings acquired from the Gennari heirs for the Royal Collection, sometime between 1758 and 1763, contained offsets of original drawings by the master that were part of the contents of the artist’s studio, it is likely that the present sheet was once part of the large corpus of drawings by Guercino in the Casa Gennari.
At least four other drawings of this subject by Guercino are known: a pen and ink study in a private collection in Germany (H.-P. Wipplinger, ed., Die Sammlung Klüser. Zurück in die Zukunft: Zeichnungen von Tiepolo bis Warhol / Back to the Future: Drawings from Tiepolo to Warhol. The Klüser Collection, exh. cat., Krems, Kunsthalle, 2014, p. 31); another drawing in the same technique sold at Christie’s, London, 19 April 1994, lot 62; a third sheet, formerly in the collections of Padre Sebastiano Resta, Lord Somers and Richard Houlditch Jr., sold in Paris in 2019 (Sotheby’s, Paris, 28 March 2019, lot 103). A further red chalk study, reversing the composition so that Cimon appears on the right and Pero on the left, from the H. S. Reitlinger's collection was sold at Sotheby’s in London, 9 December 1953, lot 58.
A reworked offset or counterproof of this drawing is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (inv. RCIN 902573). Since the album of counterproofs of Guercino drawings acquired from the Gennari heirs for the Royal Collection, sometime between 1758 and 1763, contained offsets of original drawings by the master that were part of the contents of the artist’s studio, it is likely that the present sheet was once part of the large corpus of drawings by Guercino in the Casa Gennari.