Nicholas Turner (see Literature) was the first to recognize that this splendid drawing, formerly attributed to Pietro da Cortona, is the work of the famous artist from Cento, Guercino, and to point out that the elegantly dressed man looking to the left is in fact the painter himself. A self-portrait of such magnitude and importance, combining exquisite draftsmanship with deep introspection, is not only unique in the drawn œuvre of Guercino, but is also an extremely rare surviving testimony of any artist of his time. Generous in size, this is a magnificent addition to the artist’s known drawings, and was surely made as a finished work in its own right, most probably intended to be given as a gift to an important patron or institution.

As Turner emphasises, Guercino here 'handled his materials with rare finesse, suggesting a wider range of color and tone than the materials themselves, while at the same time denying himself the easy option of using white chalk for the highlights'.¹ This is a tour de force of bravura technique, in which the eye-catching combination of black and red chalk is intentionally used to its utmost potential with delicacy and elegance and the paper tone is also exploited to capture the light, while the infinitely subtle smudging of the chalks creates what Turner describes as 'a velvety roseate grey in the shadows of the face and neck'.² Guercino is totally in charge of the media, capturing details with the utmost care so that one even hardly notices the small pentimenti in the face (for example on the point of the nose, and on the ear, which was initially placed a little lower and further forward). At the same time, while the head is extremely finished and the face is characterized by this delicate variety of nuances, the body, half turned, is much more broadly defined, just in black chalk and stumping.

Guercino portrays himself wearing a cut silk or velvet jacket, echoing an earlier fashion, with a white linen collar possibly enriched with lace at the edges. His face, almost in profile, is thin and narrow, and seen from an angle that best conceals his well known squint, a debility of the right eye which resulted in his nickname' il Guercino'.³ Turner has proposed a dating to circa 1630, when the artist was approaching forty years of age, and rightly stresses that this is 'one of the most beautiful of Guercino's extant finished drawings in coloured chalks'.⁴ No other drawn self-portrait is known.

A fascinating and revealing comparison can be made between the present drawing and the earliest drawn portrait of Guercino, a three colored chalk study on blue paper (fig. 1) made by Ottavio Leoni in 1623, at the end of Guercino’s Roman sojourn.⁵ The two portraits could not be more different. Guercino brilliantly disguised his own squint and gave his likeness an aura of gravitas and authority; the drawing seems more like the effigy of a nobleman, gazing forward into space, than of an artist. Leoni, on the other hand, though also flattering his sitter with an elegant, embroidered silk jacket, shows him with unruly hair and does not attempt to hide the obvious atrophy of his right eye, creating an image that conveys none of the same nobility. As Turner has pointed out, a number of painted portraits of the artist, later in date, are also known, including a self-portrait rediscovered in 1990, now in the Schoeppler collection, in London.⁶  The likeness of the painter seems to have changed considerably with age, though we can still see elements of his distinctive angular features in one of the last lifetime portraits, the handsome terracotta bust of 1657 (fig. 2), by the Roman sculptor Fabrizio Ariguzzi (active 1655-1674). This striking sculpted portrait of the artist, which belongs to the Pinacoteca Civica, in Cento but is now on deposit in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, conveys the same strength of character as our drawn example and must, according to Turner, have been commissioned by Guercino himself. Despite their different media, both portraits share a very discernible gravitas and solemnity.

Guercino used the distinctive combination of red and black chalks that is seen here in some of his most attractive and impressive finished drawings. He employed these media on only a few occasions in his early period, before he went to Rome in 1621, but more frequently in the 1630s and 1640s. The artist’s technical virtuosity and ability to achieve extraordinary effects of softness and luminosity are strikingly evident in this self-portrait, which is a testimony to his creative and experimental mind.

1. Turner, loc. cit., p. 23

2.  Ibid.

3. Turner explains that Guercino 'must have rigged up two mirrors, roughly opposite each other so that the one would correct the reversed image of the other'. Ibid.;

4. Ibid.;

5. Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, inv. no. B. VII, fol. 7,8; for the related print by Leoni, see Turner, op. cit., p. 22, reproduced fig. 14

6. Turner, op. cit., p. 25, reproduced fig. 16; a further version of this or copy of it is in the Louvre, inv. no. 266. I; Turner, op. cit., fig. 17