Cupid Seated on a Ledge, oil on canvas, 51.5 x 39 cm, framed

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for confirming the attribution of the present painting after examining the original.

In this previously unpublished painting, the wingless Cupid sits on a white drapery on a ledge in a wall. He has just fired an arrow and looks mischievously into the distance, presumably to see if he has hit his target. Beside him on the ledge is another arrow destined for a future victim. The pudgy infant, so typical of the putti and angels in Guercino’s early pictures, is taken, with only slight variations in lighting and pose, from the figure of the Christ Child in the St William Receiving the Cowl, Guercino’s famous pre-Roman altarpiece painted in 1620 for the Locatelli Chapel, in S. Gregorio, Bologna, and now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale (fig. I, detail).(1) In the St William, the Christ Child appears in the sky, seated on his mother’s lap, also on a white drapery. He proffers a small, wooden cross in his right hand to the two saints in the clouds, upper right, generally identified as St Joseph and St James. As a “spin-off” from this great picture, the Cupid is conceived as an independent work in its own right. The figure very probably corresponds precisely in size with its counterpart in the altarpiece. If this is so, as seems likely, the figure must have been based on a tracing made from the altarpiece while it was still in the studio.

The transformation of an Infant Christ into a Cupid is a daring leap of the imagination, characteristic of Guercino’s invention. The adroit shift in iconography was achieved by substituting a bow for a cross, adding an extra arrow to the ledge, and changing the Christ Child’s reddish blond hair to jet black, a colour more suggestive of the trouble-making Cupid. In the St William, the Virgin steadies her infant son by holding his left arm with her left hand, but here Cupid’s left side is in deep shadow, so the absence of her hand is not noticed. One of the more significant alterations is in pose of Cupid’s legs, with his right knee raised appreciably higher than that of the Christ Child. His knees are roughly in line with each other, instead of slanting down to the left as the Christ Child’s.

Guercino painted the Cupid rapidly and confidently, his powerful brushstrokes leaving deep furrows in the thick paint, for example in the knee and upper shin of Cupid’s right leg, and in the shin of his left. There are also some exquisite touches in the face and in the drapery. The blurring of the peripheries of the forms as Cupid’s pale body meeting the dark background suggests the atmosphere of twilight, a subtlety of effect beyond the capacities of any follower. A number of pentiments testify to Guercino’s creative process, of these the most conspicuous are the repetitions in the outline at the top of Cupid’s right thigh, which was first painted even higher. The dominating influence on the picture is that of the Bolognese Ludovico Carracci, while another powerful inspiration is that of Titian, to whom the young Guercino was indebted for his sombre palette and vibrant textures.

The Cupid is not the only instance in Guercino’s pre-Roman work of a successful figure being plucked from its original context in a larger composition to feature on its own in a smaller canvas intended as a work of art in its own right. Removed from its former setting, the figure was then given a new identity. Such spin-offs allowed Guercino to make a little extra money on top of what he had been paid for the larger, more expensive picture. A good example of this practice—which Guercino seems to have discontinued soon after his Roman period (1621-23)—is his adaptation of Lazarus’s sister in the Raising of Lazarus, in the Louvre, Paris, painted in c. 1619, into a Magdalen, a picture formerly in the Suida Manning Collection, New York, and now in the Jack S. Blanton Museum, Austin, Texas.(2) To effect this change, the Magdalen, stands half length behind a block of stone and rests her right hand on a skull placed on top of it. Following Mahon’s suggestion, the Austin picture is generally dated c. 1624-25, but it might well be earlier, nearer in execution to the Raising of Lazarus, which had provided the model for the figure.(3) 

We are grateful to Nicholas Turner for cataloguing the present painting.

Notes:
1). L. Salerno, I dipinti del Guercino, Rome, 1988, pp. 148-49, no. 69; and D. Mahon, Catalogo critico, in: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri Il Guercino 1591–1666, exh. cat. Museo Civico Archeologico, Bologna, and Pinacoteca Civica and Chiesa del Rosario, Cento, September to November, 1991, pp. 128-131, no. 45.
2). Another possible spin-off is the Half-length Sibyl, painted in 1619, in the collection of the late Sir Denis Mahon, now on loan to the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (Salerno, 1988, p. 132). The sibyl’s pose is identical to that of one of the women tending St Sebastian in the St Sebastian Succoured, in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (Salerno, 1988, p. 131, no. 54; Mahon, 1991, pp. 110/11, no. 37). In the painting she holds a basin filled with water in her left hand and, in her right, squeezes a sponge, with which she is about to bathe the young man’s wounds. In the Mahon collection picture, a scroll is held in the sibyl’s right hand, instead of the dripping sponge, and instead of supporting the basin in her left hand, she keeps it unfurled. The Half-length Sibyl was not brought to the same degree of completion as its prototype, but in my view this does not justify Mahon’s claim that it is a full-size sketch for it. The different identity given by Guercino to such recycled figures – such as the Cupid Seated on a Ledge and the Magdalen – suggests that the Half-length Sibyl followed its counterpart. It was doubtless left unfinished until a client appeared who was prepared to pay for its completion or was otherwise satisfied to take it as it was.
3). The colouring and size of the two figures closely correspond, and it would be hard to see how this could have been achieved once the Raising of Lazarus had been despatched to Cardinal Serra (1570–1623), who was the likely recipient of the picture.