Oil on canvas
38 x 48 ½ inches; 96.5 x 123.2 cm.
circa 1619
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Provenance:
Possibly painted for Cardinal Giacomo Serra;
Perhaps Duke of Savoia Collection, 1631;
Private collection, Europe
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Guercino was one of the leading Italian painters of the seventeenth century. His nickname (literally, squinter) is supposed to have been devised by Marchese Enzo Bentivoglio, a prominent connoisseur and lifelong friend. He was most renowned for his innovative compositions and psychological insight.
A precocious talent, Guercino was born in 1591 in Cento and received his earliest training there. However, the formative influence on the development of his style came from Bologna, where he received instruction from Cremonini and Gennari, with his greatest inspiration coming from the naturalistic paintings of Lodovico Carracci. Early works, such as this Christ and the Woman of Samaria, reveal the artist’s use of large forms, strong color, and broad, vigorous brushwork. His method of using light and shadow was unrelated to the discoveries of Caravaggio and derived from Bologna and Venice, which Guercino visited in 1618.
Traditionally, the three known copies of Christ and the Woman of Samaria were felt to support a theory that there was an original painting by Guercino, presumed to be lost. The undeniable quality of the present work shows it to be autograph and the rediscovered original by Guercino, painted about 1619.
In 1619 Guercino was at the height of his powers and received several commissions from Cardinal Giacomo Serra, the papal legate to Ferrara. These included a Saint Sebastian (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna), a Prodigal Son (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), and the Samson Captured by the Philistines (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Serra was a notable collector and in Rome had patronized Rubens. Guercino painted at least two other works for him, for which he was granted the title of Cavaliere. In 1981 Sir Denis Mahon proposed the interesting theory, based on his knowledge of the copies, that the original Christ and the Woman of Samaria, which he considered lost, might also have been executed for Cardinal Serra, Guercino’s prime patron at the time.
The three copies relating to the original painting are the picture in the Detroit Institute of Art, oil on canvas, (39 x 54 ¼ inches; 99 x 138 cm.), which was reproduced in the Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Art, VIII, 1926-27, p. 77; a version of inferior quality in the Davis Art Museum, Wellesley College, oil on canvas, (37 x 50 inches; 94 x 127 cm.); and a very weak copy that appeared on the Italian antiques market in Reggio Emilia some time ago.
Several works may relate to the present work. A painting of the subject (oil on canvas, private collection) was reproduced by E. Riccomini and Sir Denis Mahon , with the images taken from a small photograph found in the Fiocco archive, Fondazione Cini, Venice. In addition, there is an engraving after the picture by Giovanbattista Coriolano, and Sir Denis Mahon cited four drawings for the composition.
Especially intriguing is a painting by Guercino of the subject that was mentioned in an inventory of the Duke of Savoia from 1631.
Guercino’s earliest paintings, such as the Christ and the Woman of Samaria, are painted in an intensely dramatic Baroque style, but, by the mid-1620s, he had developed a more classicizing manner. The transformation of his style was quite profound, but all of Guercino's works reveal certain common qualities: psychologically profound facial expressions and gestures; rich, strong colors; and atmospheric handling of paint.
In 1621 Guercino went to Rome, where he played a major role in the evolution of Roman High Baroque art. Among many other commissions, he decorated the Casino Ludovisi. The main fresco, Aurora, on the ceiling of the Grand Hall, is a spirited romantic work, painted to appear as though there were no ceiling, so that the viewer could see Aurora’s chariot moving directly over the building. Yet it already reveals something of the crucial experience of his stay in Rome, his contact with Pope Gregory XV’s private secretary, Monsignor Agucchi, a propagandist for the classicism of Annibale Carracci’s balanced and restrained Roman style. Guercino developed a style that conformed with Carraccesque principles, for example, in his Sta. Petronilla (1621; Capitoline Museum, Rome). Some of his later pieces approach the manner of his popular contemporary Guido Reni, and are painted with more lightness and clearness. Guercino was esteemed very highly in his lifetime.
On the death of Gregory XV in 1623, Guercino opened a studio in Cento. Then, upon the death of Guido Reni (1642), whose position in Bologna as heir to Annibale Carracci had been unassailable, he moved his studio to that city, where he was the leading painter until his death in 1666.
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