GIOVANNI FRANCESCO BARBIERI, IL GUERCINO (CENTO 1591-1666 BOLOGNA)

Guercino executed two different paintings of Judith with the Head of Holofernes. One, painted in 1651 for the speziale Giacomo Zanoni, is identified with a canvas now in the Musée de Brest (inv. 69-2-1; see Turner, op. cit., no. 386, ill.). An earlier version of the subject was painted for ‘la Principessa Serenissima di Mantova’ and paid for by the Duke of Mantua in 1638, known today only from what appears to be a copy (Turner, op. cit., 240, ill., as by or after Guercino). The poses of the figures in the drawing – with Judith seen frontally and the servant in the right corner of the composition – reveal that this study more closely resembles the lost painting than the canvas in Brest. Another drawing attributed to to Guercino depicting Judith with the Head of Holofernes, executed in black chalk, is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (inv. RCIN 902864; see Mahon and Turner, op. cit., no. 360, ill.). It is in the masterly use of pen and ink in the present sheet, however, that the dynamism of the composition is best expressed.