An evangelist seated at a table, looking up from his writing

Stylistically, Nicholas Turner compares this study with a number of Guercino’s drawings preparatory for two of the main altarpieces dating to his Bolognese period in the second half of the 1640s (Denis Mahon, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, 1591-1666. Disegni, exhib. cat., Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, 1991, nos. 129-133, ill.). The altarpiece depicting All Saints in Glory painted in 1645-1647 and originally adorning the Church of the Sacre Stimmate, Modena, is now in the the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse (inv. 2004 1 43); S. Filippo Neri in Ecstasy, still in the Church of Santa Maria di Galliera, Bologna was executed around the same period. However, the present drawing does not seem to be related to any specific commission.