Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino

Commissioned by Cardinal Fabrizio Savelli (1606/7-1659) during his time as Papal Legate in Bologna;
John Chetwynd-Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1791-1852), Alton Towers, Staffordshire, by 1833;
His sale, Alton Towers, Christie's, 6 July 1857, lot 78, bought by Rhodes for 32 guineas (incorrectly described as St Mary of Egypt, in a yellow drapery, her long golden hair falling over her shoulders, kneeling in a cavern before a crucifix and holding a scourge; with landscape background. A very important and beautiful gallery work);
James Arnold, Macclesfield;
John Birchenough, Macclesfield;
Arthur Coventry, whose gift of the present picture to the town of Macclesfield is recorded in The Macclesfield Courier and Herald of 17 January 1903;
Macclesfield Borough Council;
By whom sold, London Sotheby's, 9 December 1981, lot 30 for £92,000, where bought by the present owners.

Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, Il Guercino, dipinti e disegni,  6 September - 10 November 1991, cat. no. 123;
New York, Richard L. Feigen & Co., Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino (1591-1666), 13 March - 20 April 1992, cat. no. 10, reproduced p. 36;
Mexico City, Museo Nacional de San Carlos, María Magdalena: éxtasis y arrepentimiento, 17 May - 2 September 2001, pp. 201-202, cat. no. 25, reproduced pp. 127 and 201.

C.C. Malvasia, Felsina pittrice; vite de' pittori bolognesi, vol. II, Bologna 1678, p. 376 [later ed., with notes by G.P. Zanotti, Bologna, 1841, II, pp. 267, 330];
[J.A. Calvi], Notizie della vita, e delle opere del cavaliere Gioan Francesco Barbieri, detto il Guercino da Cento..., Bologna, 1808, p. 122;
J.D. Passavant (trans. by Lady Eastlake), Tour of a German Artist in England, vol. II, London 1836 [reprint: East Ardsley, West Yorkshire, 1978], p. 80;
G.F. Waagen, Kunstwerke und Künstler in England und Paris, Berlin 1838, II, p. 462 [English ed., trans. by H.E. Lloyd, London, 1838, III, pp. 253-254; revised English ed., London, 1854, vol. III, p. 384];
W. Adam, The Gem of the Peak; or Matlock Bath and Its Vicinity. An Account of Derby... (3rd ed.), London 1843, p. 262 (incorrectly identifies subject as St. Mary of Egypt);
G. Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti di quadri, statue, disegni,...dal secolo XV al secolo XIX, Modena 1870 [reprint: Bologna, 1975], p. 166;
D. Mahon, Il Guercino: dipinti, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1968, cited under no. 88, p. 191;
N.B. Grimaldi, Il Guercino, Bologna 1968, (2nd, revised ed.), p. 107, where the picture is incorrectly listed as being in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Spoleto. (The painting of this subject in Spoleto is that of 1652 recorded by Grimaldi on page 109, which is identical with the painting wrongly said to date from 1651 recorded on the same page);
L. Salerno, I Dipinti del Guercino, Rome 1988, p. 335, cat. no. 264; reproduced in colour p. 71; p. 331, under cat. no. 260, p. 348, under cat. no. 279;
S. Loire, `Etudes récentes sur le Guerchin,' in Storia dell'arte, 67, September - December 1989, pp. 264 and note 11, p. 265;
S. Loire, Le Guerchin en France, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1990, pp. 64, 65, cited under cat. no. 12, note 97;
D.M. Stone, Guercino: catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1991, p. 259, cat. no. 249, reproduced in colour; mentioned p. 290 under cat. no. 282;
D. Mahon, Il Guercino, dipinti e disegni, exhibition catalogue, 1991, pp. 322-5, cat. no. 123, reproduced in colour pp. 323, 325 (detail);
B. Ghelfi, (ed.), Il Libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, Bologna 1997, pp. 44 and note 78, p. 144, entry no. 414 and note, pp. 205, 216, 230, reproduced plate 19;
C. Strinati and R. Vodret, Guercino e la pittura emiliana del '600, exhibition catalogue, Padua 2000-2001, p. 60 under cat. no. 15, reproduced;
N. Largier, Lob der Peitsche: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung, Munich 2001, p. 193, reproduced fig. 32 [English trans. by G. Harman, Brooklyn, New York, 2007, p. 227, reproduced p. 229, fig. 5.2];
S. Barchiesi in D. Mahon (ed.), Guercino: Poesia e sentimento nella pittura del '600, exhibition catalogue, 2003-2004, p. 267, under cat. no. 94;
P.M. Jones, Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni, Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont 2008, pp. 216-217, reproduced in colour plate 12.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a recent lining and stretcher. Its great size has led it to be rolled at some time, leaving some vertical craquelure and a certain amount of minor vertical flaking. The quite recent restoration has touched these out, with rather more widespread little touches scattered in the most vulnerable brown areas, for instance by the top edge and elsewhere in the background. In the lower left base corner there is quite wide patchy retouching, as also much of the way up the left edge as well as sporadically along the base edge. Further into the left foreground of the picture there are two or three larger old knocks, with slightly lumpy darkened retouching. However rolling has not meant much widespread damage and the central modelling of the figure is well preserved, with all the denser lighter paint of the sky, the drapery, the crucifix and the foreground rocks and water virtually intact. The warm ground has become more prominent as the half tones grew more transparent with age and some wear, so that the shadowy side of the head and body is fairly thin, and there are small strengthening touches for instance in the far cheek and eye, and the finer definitions in the browns of the hair for instance have gradually disappeared. In part this may be a question of a synthetic varnish dimming down the depths of the darks and traces of past glazing. Nevertheless the painting overall clearly remains seriously powerful. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This Penitent Magdalene is one of a series of five life-size paintings of saints commissioned by Cardinal Fabrizio Savelli in 1649. Savelli was appointed Papal Legate in Bologna on 1 September 1648, holding that position until 1651, and payment of 100 scudi for the painting is recorded in the artist's Libro dei conti under the entry for 21 November of 1649.¹

The five pictures in the series are all vertical and of very similar dimensions. Malvasia (see Literature) lists the first three paintings in the series including a Saint Francis, now in the Chiesa di San Cetteo in Pescara, for which payment was received on 3 April 1649; a Saint Jerome, paid for on 30 August 1649 and now in the Eglise Saint-Laurent in Nogent-Sur-Seine; and the present Magdalene. Two further paintings, presumably omitted by Malvasia as they were paid for after Savelli had left Bologna, can be added to the series on the basis of style and measurements: a Saint James the Greater, now in a Private Collection in Vienna,² paid for by a certain Paris Maria Grassi on 27 June 1651, and a Saint John the Baptist in the wilderness,³ bought on 22 November 1952 by Cardinal Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, as a gift to Pope Innocent X Pamphilij in Rome, where it still hangs in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij.  
 
The Magdalene is portrayed here repenting her sins, iconographically very similar to St Mary of Egypt, the penitent harlot, and in the past the picture has incorrectly been identifed as such (see Christie's sale 1857 in Provenance). As symbols of contrition she and the other saints in the series are held up as exemplars of counter-reformation piety. She is shown in a rocky cove in the desert of Sainte Baume in Provence where legend has it that she spent the last 30 years of her life. She has with her three of her attributes, the whip, the book and the crucifix, but is devoid of her usual vase of ointment. The background is simple and does not draw our attention away from her. A shaft of light streams into the cave to illuminate the crucifix and we see that the saint has pulled down her tunic and with her right arm reaches over to whip the left side of her back. However, the right arm reaches across gently, without the force one might expect, and fits in naturally into the balanced composition. The calm of the scene is mirrored in the soft lighting and muted palette in which the highlights in her hair match the golden tone of her drapery, and the subtle plays of light and dark. Rather than through movement, the intensity of the scene is conveyed through the concentration on her face, especially noticable in the beautiful preparatory drawing (fig 1).

Though the Magdalene is the only female in this series of saints, her nudity does not detract from the psychological insight for which Guercino strives. The focus on the spiritual moment rather than on her nudity is underlined by the fact her breasts are for the most part covered. This contrasts with contemporary depictions of the nude, often portrayed through depictions of Susannah and the Elders. The sobriety of the scene is emphasized when the painting is compared to other works within the artist's own oeuvre, including other portrayals of the Magdalene such as the one in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna, inv. no. 6605, (see fig 2) ⁴ where the saint is portrayed in a sensuous pose, bare breasted, with a hint of a smile on her lips, approaching sexual rather than spiritual ecstasy.

Savelli was a forceful patron: it is said that the Cardinal was so keen on Guercino's work that when he visited his studio he insisted on buying an Erminia and a shepherd, now lost, which had been commissioned by another of the artist's important patrons, the Sicilian Don Antonio Ruffo. The artist was unable to refuse the cardinal, presumably, as Mahon notes,⁵ since he had already commissioned the series of 5 saints. Guercino at that point was forced to lie to Ruffo, telling him that the Cardinal's arrival in the city and his constant pressurising had forced him to put all other works on hold. He did not dare admit that the Cardinal had insisted on claiming for himself the half finished work destined for Ruffo and was thus forced to paint two versions (Ruffo's painting now hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art inv. no. 62.12), as indicated in his entries in the Libro dei Conti for the 14th and 16th of January 1649.⁶

After leaving Bologna Savelli is known to have taken the pictures back to Rome with him as it is listed as hanging in his rooms.⁷ However, it is not known for certain how the picture made its way to England, though it was perhaps after the Savelli family became extinct in 1712. Passavant (see Literature) was the first to record its presence on these shores in 1836 when he described it as "remarkably fine", and Waagen saw it soon after, describing it as "more noble in character than is usual with this master, and in lightness and clearness of tone approaching Guido."⁸ However, the composition was only known through copies until its sale in these Rooms in 1981 when it re-emerged onto the market.⁹

1. See Ghelfi under Literature, p. 144, entry 414.
2. Salerno, 1988, p. 348, cat. no. 279, reproduced p. 349.
3. Salerno, op. cit. p. 359, cat. no 290, reproduced.
4. Salerno, op.cit. pp. 362-3, cat. no. 294, reproduced p. 363.
5. Mahon, 1991, p. 322.
6. See a series of letters between the artist and Ruffo quoted by Mahon and published in Bollettino d'Arte, X, 1916, pp. 62-65, 95-97.
7. See Campori in Literature.
8. See Waagen in Literature.
9. For a detailed list of known copies see Salerno, op. cit. p. 335.