Born in Cento in Emilia, Giovan Francesco Barbieri known as Guercino was without doubt one of the most consummate and fertile masters of Italian drawing in the seventeenth century. His production was distinguished from that of his contemporaries by its inventive vivacity and exceptional technical expertise. The remarkable vigour of his drawings was immediately appreciated by the historians, and the features of “tasteful ease” that have aptly been discerned as marking Guercino’s graphic production invite us to see this facility, which was the artist’s most notable quality, not simply in the sense of a natural gift but rather as an only partly innate talent for graphic expression.
The Prints and Drawings Department of the Uffizi boasts a remarkable collection of over seventy-five drawings by Guercino, most of them on display in the exhibition. For many of these we have to thank the singularly keen collector’s eye of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, who over a quarter of a century, from 1650 to 1675, amassed an unsurpassed collection of antique drawings. The show also provides the opportunity to illustrate the most recent research and the new attributions that go to join those of the better-known drawings, thus offering the public a complete overview of Barbieri’s importance as a draughtsman. Most of the drawings are figure studies, preparatory designs for compositions spanning the artist’s entire career. However, the Uffizi collection is particularly well-furnished with the earlier graphic works of the artist, executed before his first important Roman sojourn between 1621-1623, which marked a crucial turning-point in Guercino’s artistic training. Other types of drawings on display, comprising landscapes, caricatures and genre subjects, are more difficult to date, since we have only stylistic elements to go by.
Displayed here alongside the drawings of the master are a similar number of works produced by the artists of his studio, first and foremost by his nephews Benedetto (1633-1715) and Cesare Gennari (1637-1688). In the section devoted to his late followers, imitators and copyists, we note the names of Livio Mehus, Antonio Domenico Gabbiani, Giuseppe Maria Ficatelli (or Figatelli) and Francesco Bartolozzi, as well as the mysterious “Guercino Forger”.
After Florence, this important selection of Guercino’s drawings will be transferred to the Kunstmuseum in Berne where the exhibition will run from 11 September to 22 November.