Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino

Sir Thomas Lawrence (L.2446)

Glued to the backing paper only along the left margin. Overall in quite good condition and red chalk strong. There is a tear at the top left near the dove. Two pin point holes higher to the right towards the top right margin where there are also few small wrinkles in the paper. Two nicks along the right edge and at the bottom edge near the corner the paper appears slightly wrinkled. On the left edge where the drawing is glued the paper is stained and there is a tear in the mid-of the margin.
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This drawing is stylistically datable to the second half of the 1640s.  It does not seem to relate to any known painting, although around 1647 Guercino had completed a large altarpiece for the church of San Paolo, Bologna, with St. Gregory pointing out to Christ the Souls suffering in Purgatory, (fig. 1).

Nicholas Turner, who has seen the drawing in the original, has kindly pointed out that the pen and ink study of a Half-length figure of St. Gregory, seated on a throne, in the Eric Rose Collection, must relate to the same, unfulfilled, commission as the present red chalk study.¹ It is possible, although there is no exact connection, that both drawings are preliminary ideas for the painting mentioned above.

1.  N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, London 1991, pp. 260-261, no. 48, reproduced, fig. App. no. 48