Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino

Hinged to the mount at the upper margin. Tip of the lower right corner is missing. There are a number of small nicks and small repaired tears at the left and right margins. Some light brown staining, not strong. Pen and ink still vibrant and fresh.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This is a marvellously expressive and poetic example of one of Guercino's landscape drawings.  A rare subject in his painted oeuvre, it was instead a genre that he frequently pursued with pen and paper.  Throughout his career, Guercino executed landscapes of every variety, mainly in the medium of pen and ink, with a few exceptions, executed purely in wash.  These beautiful sheets must be regarded as works of art in their own right and the numerous surviving examples provide a wonderful insight into Guercino's skill and handling of line.

Most of his landscapes are a combination of fantasy and reality, using his own imagination together with landscape motifs that he observed in and around his native town of Cento.  The present landscape demonstrates Guercino's conveyance of great depth and recession within his compositions.  With economy of line and subtle gradations of tone we are able to traverse the terrain, following the tracks of the travellers seen in the distance.  Water features in many of his landscapes and here the inclusion of a boat with figures in the foreground sets up his principal spatial plane.  Windswept trees dominate the centre of the composition, their soft movement so tangible, through Guercino's rendering of line.

Guercino's drawings evoke the idyllic landscapes of his predecessors, Giorgione, Titian and Campagnola and are also indebted to the Carracci school.  Furthermore, his precision of line and meticulous divisions of spatial planes reflect the influence of Northern prints.  However, without doubt the present example and the numerous other landscape drawings in private and public collections illustrate an individuality in this genre and an expression that remains unique and exclusively Guercino's.

For a full discussion of Guercino's landscapes see P. Bagni, Il Guercino e il Suo Falsario, I Disegni di Paesaggio, Bologna 1985