Currently not on view
Woman with Deformed Lips,
1630s–40s
A prolific painter of the Italian Baroque period, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Il Guercino (“little squinter”), was also a tireless draftsman. Guercino constantly sketched his surroundings and fellow townspeople, continuing Leonardo’s interest in unusual faces, while also creating caricatures of specific individuals and inventing imaginary beings. This sheet belonged to an album of caricatures that was most likely compiled by an artist in eighteenth-century Bologna and was later owned by the British painter Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Woman with Deformed Lips, however, seems to be a more compassionate rendering of an individual, so specific in its details that physicians have suggested she was suffering from orofacial granulamatosis (OFG). It is possible that Guercino’s own cross-eyed appearance (a strabismus) rendered him more sympathetic toward those considered “deformed” by contemporaries.
More About This Object
Information
1630s–40s
- Jacob Bean, Italian drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University; 106 selected examples, (New York: October House, 1966)., no. 14
- Diane De Grazia, Guercino drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University, March ll through April 6, 1969, (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, 1969)., no. 34
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)., Vol. 1: pp. 9-10, no. 24 (illustrated in Vol. 2 under the same catalog number)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 29 (illus.)
- David Stone, Guercino, master draftsman: works from North American collections, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museum; Bologna, Italy: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991)., cat. nos. 87-91 (illus.); p. 198-207;
- Prisco Bagni, Diane De Grazia, Denis Mahon, Fausto Gozzi and Andrea Emiliani, Il Guercino, 1591-1666: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri: Bologna, Museo civico archeologico, Cento, Pinacoteca civica e Chiesa del Rosario, 6 settembre-10 novembre 1991, (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991).
- Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 100, cat. no. 42; p. 102 (illus.)
