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Lot Essay
After a drawing by Guercino sold in these Rooms, 14 April 1992, lot 108. In the 18th Century that drawing was in the collection of P.-J. Mariette, and the present drawing may have been drawn by Bartolozzi in an English collection following Mariette's sale in 1775.
The composition is one of a number of solutions devised by Guercino for his lost or unexecuted picture of The Vison of Saint Francis of circa 1618. Other versions of the composition are in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Sir Denis Mahon's collection on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and formerly in the Witt Collection (A.C. Blume, 'A Vision of St. Francis by Guercino in the Wadsworth Atheneum', Master Drawings, 1991, pp. 52-8).
The composition is one of a number of solutions devised by Guercino for his lost or unexecuted picture of The Vison of Saint Francis of circa 1618. Other versions of the composition are in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Sir Denis Mahon's collection on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and formerly in the Witt Collection (A.C. Blume, 'A Vision of St. Francis by Guercino in the Wadsworth Atheneum', Master Drawings, 1991, pp. 52-8).