(Cento 1591–1666 Bologna)
The Penitent Saint Jerome, half-length,
oil on canvas, 118 x 102 cm, framed

Provenance:
possibly Monsignor Cesare Raccagna di Brisighella;
Ruffo della Scaletta collection, Messina, until 1908;
and thence by descent to the present owner

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for confirming the attribution after inspection of the present painting in the original.

Guercino’s composition is recorded, in reverse, in an undated print (see fig 1.) engraved by the artist’s nephew Gianfrancesco Mucci (1621–1665), published by P. Bagni, Il Guercino e i suoi incisori, Rome, 1988, p. 120, fig. 158. Bagni wrongly assumed that the subject was based on a lost drawing by Guercino. The inscription ‘inV[enit]’ lower left, credits Guercino as the designer of the subject. Mucci, who was born in Cento, transferred to Bologna in 1642, along with most of Guercino’s household. He seems to have been active as a printmaker for only two years, in 1640 and, more sporadically, in the following year. The print is dedicated to Marcantonio Bassenghi, a descendant of an ancient and then recently ennobled Bolognese family. The dedicator is Virgilio Sirani, a fellow Bolognese, who was related to a family of apothecaries and painters of the same name, to which Elisabetta Sirani belonged.

The style of Guercino’s Penitent Saint Jerome suggests the picture was made circa 1640, shortly before the painter’s move to Bologna, a dating which fits with Mucci’s short period of work as an engraver. Some minor differences between painting and print may be noted, for example, the cloud-filled sky in the painting is left blank, perhaps intentionally. Around this date, Guercino is known to have painted two half-length Saint Jeromes: one for Monsignor Cesare Raccagna di Brisighella, vice-legate of Ferrara (see Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, Nuova Alfa Editoriale, ed. 1997, p. 106, no. 240) and the other for a gentleman described as ‘Ma[gnifi]co M[esser] Sebastiano Butricella di Cento’ (see Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, Nuova Alfa Editoriale, ed. 1997, p. 105, no. 237). Esach client paid 50 ducats for his picture, the amount exactly corresponding to Guercino’s tariff for a half-length painting.

The Penitent Saint Jerome ordered by Monsignor Raccagna may be that now in a US private collection (see D. Stone, Guercino, catalogo completo, Florence, 1991, p. 192, no. 176). It seems probable that the present Penitent Saint Jerome was the one painted for Butricelli, who may have simply acted as an intermediary. Previous to the Penitent Saint Jerome he had ordered a Madonna and Child, and just months afterwards a Head and Shoulders of Saint John, which he forwarded on to Modena (see Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, Nuova Alfa Editoriale, ed. 1997, nos 181–82, 237 and 248). Given the Centese connections between Guercino, Mucci and Butricella, and the painter and printmaker’s imminent move to Bologna there is some circumstantial evidence for the claim.

A half-length painting of the Penitent Saint Jerome, offered for sale at Sotheby’s, New York, on 31 January 2013, lot 244, as attributed to Guercino, which corresponds precisely in composition to the present picture but is less fully painted, is the artist’s actual-sized sketch for it.

A drawing by Guercino (pen and ink on brown paper; 181 x 194 mm.) which comes from the Poggi and Esterhazy collections and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest relates to the present painting (see A. Czere, 17th Century Italian Drawings in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2004, no. 181 dated on the grounds of style to the mid-1640s; and where it is suggested that the drawing was made for a half-figure composition, as yet unidentified).

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


Additional images:
Fig. 1: Gianfrancesco Mucci (Cento 1621-1665), Saint Jerome, after Guercino, circa 1640-41, engraving
Fig. 2: Guercino, Saint Jerome, 1644–1646, pen, brown ink on brown paper, 181 × 194 mm, inv. no. 2478 (acquired from Esterházy Collection, 1871)
© Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2016