Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino. (Cento, 1591 - Bologna, 1666) Portrait of Francesco I of Este, Duke of Modena, 1632 Oil on canvas

224 x 120,5 cm. Provenance: Commissioned by Francesco I of Este, together with the portrait of his wife Maria Farnese, who paid 630 scudi on May 31, 1633. Given by the Duke to the King of Spain, Philip IV, during his visit to Madrid in 1638. Collection of the infant D. Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón (1811-1875), Madrid: Inventory of 1835, on the occasion of the seizure of his properties for his adherence to the Carlist cause: “no 207. Otro lienzo de 8 pies de alto, por 4 pies y 4 pulgadas de ancho. Retrato de cuerpo entero del Duque de Módena ... Guarchino ". Museo de la Trinidad, Madrid (1837-1872), Salón de la media naranja, No. 254: “un retrato del Duque de Modena de cuerpo entero y [tamaño natural] vestido a la antigua. Autor (Guercino). Rdo Alto 2.23; ancho 1,33 pr la luz del marco/ Infte Dn Sebastn/ No 106/ G.P”. The painting was returned to the Infant in 1861. Private collection, Madrid.

Publication: Turner, Nicholas: The Paintings of Guercino. A revised and expanded catalogue raisonné, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Roma, 2017, pp. 160 – 161. Fig.: 131. Find next the excerpt from this source related to the painting presented here:

“In 1632 Francesco I d’ Este, Duke of Modena, commissioned Guercino to paint full-length pendant portraits of himself and his wife. A handsome young couple, the Duke and Duchess were married in Parma on 11 January 1631, and to commemorate their union the Duke ordered Guercino to paint a Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, which doubled as an augury of fertility to bride and groom. In October 1632, the Duke sent his carriage to Cento to collect Guercino and his two assistants, Bartolomeo Gennari and Matteo Loves (fl. 1621 – 1644), and on their arrival they were given accommodation at court.

Loves was sent to Bologna to buy essential materials and colours, the

preparation of which must have delayed work for some two weeks. The pendants were finished in just over two months, shortly before Christmas. On 27 December, the Duke, then away in Reggio Emilia, his second titular city after Modena, sent word to his secretary asking him to pack the pictures and send them to Reggio so that he could study them1.

Already by the mid.18th century, Guercino’s pair of portraits of the Duke

and Duchess was considered lost and known only through two sets of copies, one by Matteo Loves in the Musée des Beaux – Arts, Geneva [see Figs. 1 and 2], so it was welcome news when the Portrait of Francesco I d’ Este, Duke of Modena [presented here] came to light. As can be quickly determined from a comparison with the copy by Loves, which preserves the original format of the portrait, the canvas [studied here] was reduced at dome stage at top and both sides.

It is possible, too, that the Duke’s face was once overpainted with the

likeness of someone else. The subsequent removal of these presumed additions would explain why the original paint surface in the area of the head

1 SM, Camera Ducale, Mandati, vol. 95, guardaroba, register 18 August 1633; see Bagni 1986 p. 268, n. 15.

has been impaired. The consequent dullness from abrasion accentuates the look of melancholy on the Duke’s face, already apparent from the Geneva copy.

Compensating for these damaged areas [There] are some magnificent

passages of painting, which are clearly superior, detail for detail, to those in Geneva copy. The red-and-gold damask hanging in the left background, with its shimmering red silk lining, is rendered with a fluency that only Guercino could command. The painter went to town on other passages of material and fabrics, including the lacework trim to the Duke’s elegant background, while the two lace pompoms on the toe of each shoe are an eye-catching bravura performance a challenge to any rival to outdo [See Fig. 3]. The colour and modelling of the hands are typical of Guercino, as are the pentiments in the Duke’s left shoulder and in his slender legs in black hose. The original pendant Portrait of Maria Farnese, Duchess of Modena, remains untraced.

To judge from the copy in Geneva, it must have been an even more

intimidating lesson in the painting of formal dress than its companion. We know something of the circumstances that led to these studio copies being produced. At the beginning of 1633, Guercino and his team were back in Modena. According to his original agreement with the Duke of the previous year, he was required to oversee the painting of two sets of studio copies of the originals. In mid-March 1633, Loves was sent to Bologna to purchase materials to paint these two sets of copies. It’s widely assumed – correctly in my view– that the full-length portraits in Geneva are the copies that Loves painted in 1633, under his master’s supervision. The second set of studio copies, which Loves started but had to abandon after becoming seriously ill, were completed by a Modenese painter, Giovanni Battista Pesari (fl. 1645), but are now lost2.

The Geneva portraits are of exceptionally high quality. Without proper

technical examination, the extent to which Guercino may have intervened in Loves’s work, if at all, cannot be judged. If we compare the newly discovered original of Francesco I [presented here] and the copy in Geneva, there are differences in spirit. In Guercino’s original [presented here], the Duke seems

2 See Bagni 1986, p. 269, nn: 23-4.

overburdened by his responsibilities, while his counterpart in the Geneva picture has a neutral, even vacant expression. There is a variation, too, in the atmosphere of the surrounding space – the one sombre but credible, the other a little “smoky” and shallow”3. Bibliography: C. C. Malvasia: Felsina Pittrice. Vite de Pittori Bolognesi, Bologna 1678, II, p. 369; Bologna 1841, II, p. 263. Catalogue abregue du Tableaux exposes dans les Salons de l'ancien Asilo de Pau appartenant aux heritiers de feu de M. L'infant Don Sebastian de Bourbon, et Bragance, Pau, 1876. M. Agueda Villar: “La coleccion de pinturas del infante don Sebastian Gabriel”, in Boletín del Museo del Prado, II, n. 5, Madrid 1981, pp. 102-117. N. Artioli, E. Monducci: Dipinti “reggiani” del Bonone e del Guercino (pittura e documenti), catalogo della mostra (Reggio Emilia, Basilica della B. V. della Ghiara, 30 gennaio - 28 febbraio 1982), Reggio Emilia 1982. S. Loire: Le Guerchin en France, exhibition’s catalogue (Paris, Musee du Louvre, may, 31 – November, 12 1990), Parigi 1990. L. Salerno (consulenza scientifica di D. Mahon), I dipinti del Guercino, Roma 1988: due copie dei ritratti dei duchi sono conservate al Musees d’art et d'histoire di Ginevra, p. 240, nn. 149-150. Museo del Prado: Inventario general de pinturas, II, El Museo de la Trinidad (bienes desamortizados), Madrid, 1991, p. 95, n. 254. N. Turner; The Paintings of Guercino. A Revised and Expanded Catalogue raisonne, Roma, 2017, pp. 160 - 205.

3 Turner, Nicholas: The Paintings of Guercino. A revised and expanded catalogue raisonné, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Roma, 2017, pp. 160 – 161.

Figs. 1 and 2: Matteo Loves, Portraits of Francesco I d’ Este and Maria Farnese, the Duke and Duchess of Modena, Geneva, Musées d’ art et d’ histoire.

Fig. 3: Guercino, Portrait of Francesco I d’ Este, Duke and Duchess of Modena (detail), Nicolás Cortés Gallery.

Fig.: Guercino, Portrait of Francesco I d’ Este, Duke and Duchess of Modena, Nicolás Cortés Gallery.