Old Master Drawings

Old Master Drawings

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 49. Study of Two Female Saints in Prayer    .

Property from the Estate of an Important Midwest Collector

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

Study of Two Female Saints in Prayer

Auction Closed

January 27, 05:29 PM GMT

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Estate of an Important Midwest Collector

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

Cento 1591 - 1666 Bologna

Study of Two Female Saints in Prayer


Red chalk

195 by 200 mm; 7 ¾ by 7 ⅞ in

Mrs. Eric van Noorden,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., London, Master Drawings and Sculpture, 1989, no. 31
D.M. Stone, Guercino, Master Draftsman: Works from North American Collections, exhib. cat., Cambridge (Mass.) 1991, pp. 226-7, no. 241, reproduced plate C

As noted by David Stone (see Literature) two copies of this delicate red chalk drawing are recorded. The first is in the Uffizi, Florence,1 and the second was on the London art market in 1933.2 These two copies show a fractionally more complete composition to the lower edge of the sheet, with the female Saints kneeling full-length before a crucifix lying on an open book, thus confirming that the present sheet must have been fractionally cut at an early stage in its existence.


Stone proposes a dating to the 1650s, whilst suggesting that the two female figures were perhaps preparatory for an altarpiece depicting the Crucifixion, or the Entombment.


1. M. Marangoni, Guercino: I Grandi Maestri del Disegno, Milan 1959, no. 58, reproduced

2. With R.E.A. Wilson, London, 1933