(Cento 1591 – Bologna 1666),
Abigail Presenting Gifts to David, brush and brown ink over traces of black chalk, 625 x 757 mm

Provenance: Lord Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere; Sale, Sotheby’s, London, The Ellesmere Collection of Drawings by the Carracci and Other Bolognese Masters, Collected by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 11 July 1972, lot 97 (as Guercino’s workshop); Bernard Houthakker Amsterdam; European Private Collection.

We are grateful to Professor Nicolas Turner who has recently examined the present sheet in the original and has endorsed it as a fully autograph work by Guercino. Until recently, including the Sotheby’s sale of 1972, the present work was attributed to one of the artist’s workshop collaborators. Turner argues that, although the high degree of finish in the present sheet is unusual, Guercino occasionally did produce carefully rendered drawings that are in contrast to his more well-known swift preliminary sketches. Turner believes that the present work is one of the most excellent drawings of the former kind and therefore an important addition to Guercino’s oeuvre.

The composition is related to the painting Abigail Offering Presents to David and His Entourage from 1636, formerly at Bridgewater House, London (Fig. 1), and destroyed in the Second World War. The painting, a commission the artist received from Cardinal Antonio Barberini, was probably the most monumental composition ever painted by Guercino. The present drawing should be regarded as a ricordo of this composition and was probably executed in preparation for a copper engraving that was eventually never made.