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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, il Guercino (Italian, 1591-1666) Cupid returning an Arrow to his Quiver red chalk and stumping, laid down on to canvas h:24 w: 15 cm Provenance: From the collection of Ann Gore. The elegance of the figure's pose, the subtlety of the chiaroscuro (from the highlight in the child's body to the velvety shadow in most of his face and to the dark accents in his downcast eyes) and the beautifully counterbalanced angle of the wings to his body contribute to the satisfying way in which the figure fills the compositional space. In a number of drawings by Guercino of Cupid with his quiver, from the mid-1640s, some in red chalk and now mostly lost, but recorded in retouched offsets, it is evident that this sheet is from Guercino's own hand. Two pen-and-ink studies by Guercino show precisely the same figure type, lit in the same way, one in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1895-9-15-707; N. Turner and C. Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British Collections, London, 1991, p. 264, no. 51; and Capturing the Sublime, Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque, exh. cat. ed. by S. Folds McCullagh, Art Institute of Chicago, 2012, p. 158, no. 86). Around 1700, a significant proportion of the drawings by Guercino and his two nephews, Benedetto and Cesare Gennari, were displayed in frames on the walls of the two properties belonging to Benedetto and Cesare Gennari - the Casa Gennari, in the centre of Bologna, and their country villa just outside at Bel Poggio. Irrespective of both their authorship and the property in which they were kept, these framed drawings were laid on to canvas, rather than onto a card or paper backing, as was the normal practice in the mounting drawings from the eighteenth century onwards. The drawings of Guercino and his school from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, the largest surviving fragment of the Guercino and Guercino school drawings with a Gennari provenance, includes many examples of drawings by the master and his two main followers laid down in this way. The twentieth-century inscription in biro on the paper backing giving the Cupid Returning an Arrow to his Quiver to Cesare Gennari is incorrect. Although Cesare certainly favoured the medium of red chalk, his use of the medium is routine and does not have the subtleties of execution seen in his uncle's use of the technique. Cesare was an adviser to the Florentine family of the Medici, tipping them off when significant works by Bolognese painters came up for sale in the city. Perhaps Cesare's connection with the Medici explains the existence of the fine group of drawings by Cesare in the Uffizi, many of which are in red chalk. The numerous differences in style between this Uffizi group and the present Cupid Returning an Arrow to his Quiver surely demonstrates that the latter cannot possibly be by him (Guercino, la scuola, la maniera. I disegni agli Uffizi, exh. cat. N. Turner, December, 2008 to February, 2009, pp. 103-10, nos. 59-67).