Painted in a rich impasto with coruscating highlights in the face, this work depicting a bearded old man wearing a stunning multi-coloured turban and a heavy coat clad with furs is an important new addition to Guercino’s œuvre from the pre-Roman period. It has until now presented something of an enigma iconographically, and even its dating was not certain. However, the recent discovery of a Guercinesque painting on the art market with two half-length figures makes it possible for the first time to set out the original circumstances of the present work.

Identified as Christ before Caiaphas and attributed to Bartolomeo Gennari (1594–1661), the picture recently on the market is a full-scale copy of the present lot before it was, for unknown reasons, cut down on three sides (fig. 1). A recent X-ray of the present picture (fig. 2) confirms the reduction of the canvas and reveals the hidden presence of Christ’s gesticulating right hand (shown somewhat differently in the school copy). The radiograph even shows a pentimento for Jesus’s index finger. The hand, after the picture was cut down, would have been distracting and was painted out.

In a handwritten letter by Sir Denis Mahon to Cesare Lampronti of 30 October 2005, the former confirms the attribution of the picture to Guercino and suggests a dating of around 1625–26.¹ While possible, a date of circa 1621 is more likely, especially given the energetic brushstrokes creating the wrinkles and the Venetian approach to the fur. And it also helps to see the full composition as interpreted by the copyist, a picture Mahon almost certainly did not know. Additional support for an early dating is supplied by Guercino’s biographer Malvasia, who lists under the first months of 1621 (before the artist’s May departure for Rome) a painting of 'Un Christo avanti ad Anna, & Un S. Tomaso, che tocca la piaga à Christo al Sig. Bartolomeo Fabri'.²

Other than providing important information on the dating of the work, Malvasia's text also serves to identify its original subject, Christ before Annas. According to the Gospel of John (18:13), immediately after his arrest, Christ was taken for questioning to Annas, the former High Priest. Though no longer in the top position, Annas was still a powerful voice in the Sanhedrin, the Rabbinite court. When he was finished, he sent Jesus, bound as a prisoner, to Caiaphas, the current High Priest and Annas’s son-in-law, for further humiliation and condemnation. It was Caiaphas who sent Christ to the governor Pontius Pilate.

Malvasia’s reference to a Christ before Annas was interpreted by Mahon as a slip of the pen for the Capture of Christ now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, the pendant to the Incredulity of Saint Thomas in the National Gallery, London.³ Giovanni Battista Pasqualini (1595–1631) made an engraving in 1621 of the Capture of Christ and dedicated it to Bartolomeo Fabri. He also made a print, similarly dated to 1621, of the Saint Thomas. But what has now come to light, thanks to the discovery of the full compositional copy and its relation to the reduced original, is that there were, in fact, three paintings, likely all three for Fabri. Malvasia probably made a mistake and simply left out the Capture of Christ (a picture, we observe, with close stylistic affinities in the face of the soldier holding a lantern to that of our Man with a Turban). And perhaps all three were meant to decorate the same space, telling a profound narrative about Christ’s arrest, judgment, and the truth of his resurrection.

We are grateful David M. Stone for his research and the writing of this catalogue entry, following first-hand inspection of the painting in July 2024. We are also grateful to Daniele Benati who has endorsed the attribution and new dating of the picture.

¹ A copy of the expertise by Sir Denis Mahon is available upon request.

² Malvasia 1678, vol. II, p. 365: 'A Christ before Annas, & A S. Thomas, touching Christ's wound for Sig. Bartolomeo Fabri'.

³ D. Mahon, Il Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Cento, 1591–1666). Catalogo Critico dei Dipinti, exh. cat., Bologna 1968, pp. 103–104, nos 46 and 47, reproduced.