Currently not on view
Windy landscape with figures and a flock of sheep,
1630s
Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri), 1591–1666; born Cento, Italy; died Bologna, Italy
x1948-729
Throughout his long and illustrious career, Guercino drew highly finished landscapes, both for his own pleasure and probably as gifts for friends. In its balanced and well-ordered composition, this calligraphic drawing demonstrates how the artist worked primarily from his imagination while evoking the farming and sheep-grazing countryside near his native Cento, in northern Italy. Favorite motifs such as the windblown trees and silhouetted figures occasionally appear in the backgrounds of Guercino’s narrative paintings, as in the recently discovered Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, on view nearby.
Information
Title
Windy landscape with figures and a flock of sheep
Dates
1630s
Medium
Pen and brown ink on cream laid paper
Dimensions
19.9 x 30.7 cm (7 13/16 x 12 1/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895
Object Number
x1948-729
Inscription
Inscribed in ink, upper right: 9 P. Dol.
Reference Numbers
Gibbons 269
Culture
Type
Materials
Earl of Gainsborough; Parsons.
Purchased by Platt from Parsons, 1924.;
Note from Mr. Platt’s album: engraved by Bartolizzi; 1620’s (DiGrazia);
- Diane De Grazia, Guercino drawings in the Art Museum, Princeton University, March ll through April 6, 1969, (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, 1969)., no. 3
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)., Vol. 1: pp. 91-92, no. 237 (illustrated in Vol. 2 under the same catalog number)
- David Stone, Guercino, master draftsman: works from North American collections, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museum; Bologna, Italy: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991)., p. 118, no. 2; p. 218, no. 98
