Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino (Cento 1591-1666 Bologna)

Possibly inspired by a passage from the Old Testament, Guercino investigated this unidentified theme of two boys and an elderly man in at least three other drawings, at Chatsworth, at Windsor Castle and in a private collection, the latter engraved by Dominique Vivant Denon (D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino at Windsor Castle, Cambridge 1989, no. 499, ill.; M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Italian Drawings. Bolognese and Emilian Schools, London 1994, no. 561, ill.). The group has been dated to the 1640s by Nicholas Turner, whom we thank for confirming the attribution based on digital photograph.