Rocky Landscape with Eight Figures

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)

1750–80 · Pen and dark brown ink, brush and dark brown ink. · Drawings and Prints

This landscape drawing and three others also in the Museum's collection (inv. nos. 17.97.17; 37.165.99; and 37.165.108) are typical and competent examples of the work of the forger (or forgers) of landscape drawings by Guercino who presumably worked in Italy during the second half of the 18th century. All four sheets are executed in a thick, pasty, dark red-brown ink that is the mark of such forgeries. Such drawings are sometimes direct copies after drawings by Guercino or facsimile reproductions thereof, but the four landscapes in the Museum's collection seem rather to be pastiches, composite compositions based on selective borrowings from Guercino's landscapes.

Artist

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)

Date

1750–80

Medium

Pen and dark brown ink, brush and dark brown ink.

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1880