After Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

The prototype for this Samian Sibyl is currently in a Private Collection (see L. Salerno, I dipinti del Guercino, Rome 1988, pp. 356-7, reproduced in colour p. 75). However, as suggested by the inscription on the reverse of the canvas, the present work is more likely to be a nineteenth-century copy after a studio work executed in 1651, now in the Uffizzi Galleries in Florence (inv. no. P. 788), which for many years was thought to be the original. It is not known for certain who commissioned the Florentine studio copy, but it was presented as a gift to Cardinal Giovanni Carlo dei Medici in 1658 and is mentioned in the Florentine inventories of 1705.