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

According to Guercino's detailed account book, the subject of Bathsheba was treated by the artist only once, on a large canvas painted in 1640 for the Bolognese Count Astorre Hercolani, now in Schloss Birlinghoven at Sankt Augustin, near Cologne (N. Turner, The Paintings of Guercino. A Revised and Expanded Catalogue Raisonné, Rome, 2017, no. 261, ill.). Similarly, Guercino's pen and ink studies of the female nude are among the rarest and the most sought-after of his figure drawings, as stressed by Nicholas Turner who listed only two others in the same medium, now in the collections of Jean Bonna and Mr. and Mrs. Edward D. Baker. While in these two drawings the figure appears clothed and portrayed from the back, in the present sheet Guercino explored a different, more sensuous solution, where Bathsheba is completely nude and caught seated in a complex contrapposto.
We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for confirming the attribution of this drawing based on digital photographs.