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

The drawing depicts the moment when Christ was arrested by Roman soldiers at night in the Garden of Gethsemene after his betrayal by Judas. With mastery, Guercino creates a powerful scene combining elegant pen work with subtly varied layers of washes. The focus of the composition is on the figures, while no details of the setting are provided.

Around 1620 Guercino had painted a large canvas of this subject, a work that is now at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (inv. 1131; see N. Turner, The Paintings of Guercino. A Revised and Expanded Catalogue raisonné, Rome, 2017, no. 102, ill.). In this drawing the subject is treated differently and the sheet has been dated to a later time in the artist’s career, at the end of the 1620s. Scholars have suggested that the present drawing could be the study for a later, now lost, painting. Two other drawings by Guercino representing the Arrest of Christ are known – one is in the Princeton University Art Museum (inv. x1948-744; see Stone, op. cit., no. 15, ill.), and the other in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome (inv. F.C. 129578; see ibid., p. 35, under no. 15, ill.).