Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna

Nicholas Turner, on the basis of a colour transparency, accepts the attribution and dates the drawing between the mid 1640s and 1650.  It cannot be related to a surviving work, but the red chalk framing lines around the composition suggest that it might have been intended for a print or for a small devotional painting.  A drawing at Windsor, from the studio of Guercino, showing the Infant St. John seated in a landscape, records a composition which was etched in reverse by Bartolozzi (see Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The Drawings of Guercino...at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, p. 149, no. 459, plate 341).

Sold in fine 17th century Italian frame.