(Cento 1591–1666 Bologna)
Saint John the Baptist, half-length, standing in the wilderness,
oil on canvas, 112 x 89 cm, framed

Provenance:
probably commissioned from the artist by Pietro Mancurti, Governor of Cento, as recorded in Guercino’s account book;
by descent in the Mancurti family, Imola, Italy;
Private collection, United Kingdom (according to the stamp on the stretcher: ‘G. Morill Liner’; George Morill was a well-known British picture restorer in the second half of the 19th Century);
sale, Christie’s, London, 4 July 2012, lot 206 (as Attributed to Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino, with measurements 12.1 x 89.5 cm);
where acquired by the present owner

Probable Documentation:
Il libro dei conti del Guercino, ed. by B. Ghelfi, Bologna 1997, p. 171, no. 501 (‘16. Decembre 1655: ‘Dal Sig:r Governatore di Cento si e riceuto Ducatoni n:o 55. per la Meza Figura del S: Giovani, nel deserto’)

Literature:
N. Turner, The paintings of Guercino, Rome 2017, p. 725, no. 439 (as Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino, with measurements 121 x 89.5 cm)

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

We are also grateful to David M. Stone for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

The saint’s sorrowful expression, together with the sombre atmosphere of the space in which he stands, are counterbalanced by his splendid, youthful physique and the magnificence of his wilderness attire. Such contrasts between purity and luxury typify the spiritualism of Guercino’s late work, from circa 1650 onwards. It is notable that the Baptist is not accompanied by his usual symbol of a cross made of reeds, although his inscribed scroll floats outwards from the crook of his right arm. The saint, by indicating to his right with the flat of his right hand, seems to invite the spectator at whom he gazes earnestly, to contemplate the nearby presence of Christ, out of sight of the picture but captioned with the words: ECCE AGNUS DEI. In this fine, small-scale devotional work, Guercino captures the Baptist’s self-effacing role with great subtlety and depth.

In Nicholas Turner’s opinion, the present painting is likely to be the hitherto untraced half-length canvas of ‘S: Giovani, nel deserto’, for which the Governor of Cento (he is not named in full in in the Account Book) paid the artist on 16 December, 1655 (see Il libro dei conti del Guercino, ed. by B. Ghelfi, Bologna 1997, p. 171, no. 501). The Governor of Cento at this time was Pietro Mancurti, a native of Imola. According to Turner, the date of 1655 accords with the style of the picture.

Typical details of the master’s work can be observed for example in the saint’s hands and arms, his fur-lined tunic, his red-brown cloak and the stone parapet on which he leans his left elbow in the lower right. The variation in paint thickness is also entirely characteristic of his handling of paint, with the darks, including the blues, blue-greys and greens, mixed more thinly and often loosely applied with a broad brush. There is a slight pentiment for the index finger of the saint’s right hand and small traces of dark brown-black paint in the sky immediately above the saint’s head which may indicate that the outline of his hair was adjusted downwards slightly.

Guercino’s late red chalk drawing of a Standing, Semi-nude Youth, seen Half-length from the Front, in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, shows an identical figure to that in the present painting, except in reverse and with slight variations in the placement of some of the drapery (Sammlung Schloss Fachsenfeld, inv. II/ 27; 18.9 x 14.7 cm). The figure in the Stuttgart drawing has no attributes, so the connection with the present Saint John is not conclusive, but the similarity between the two figures is so striking and the date of the execution of both works from the 1650s that it would be unreasonable not to acknowledge a close formal relationship. It seems likely, therefore, that Guercino, who recycled the poses of his figures even when young, and then continued to make frequent use of the practice throughout his career, referring to his own considerable output of drawings in the process, may have used the Stuttgart drawing to fire his ideas in the creative process leading to this canvas.

Further support for dating the picture 1655 is in the saint’s frontal pose seen against the open mouth of a cave that frames the figure. A more ambitious variation of this same idea is to be found in Guercino’s full-length treatment of Saint John the Baptist Preaching in the Desert, of 1653-55, in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Forlì (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 720, no. 432). Work on the two canvases very likely overlapped.

Analogies of detail with other paintings from this late period also back up the proposed identification and dating of the present painting. For example, the Baptist’s left fore-arm and hand, with his elbow resting on a parapet, compares well with the right arm of Endymion in the Sleeping Endymion, of 1657-58, in the collection of Parlatore Melega, Bologna (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 740, no. 458). This same left forearm and hand of the Baptist closely matches the left forearm and hand of Saint Peter in Saint Peter Weeping, of 1650, in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio, Bologna (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 666, no. 376). Similarly, the Baptist’s parted lips, which so animate his expression as he seems to address the onlooker, find a parallel in the Magdalene’s gasping, open mouth in the Penitent Magdalene before a Crucifix, from Guercino’s late period, in the Prado, Madrid (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 654, no. 365I). Finally, there are notable echoes, in reverse, between the youthful head of the saint and that of the Half-length Saint John the Baptist, another late picture with no specific date, in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome (see op. cit. Turner, 2017, p. 691, no. 402).