Study of a Seated Infant and Another Study of a Right Arm

A study for the Christ Child in Guercino's St Joseph with the Christ Child, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
Not in Fairfax Murray catalog.
As first noted by David Stone, this is a study for the Christ Child in Guercino's St. Joseph and the Christ Child of 1637-38, now in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, but originally one of a pair of paintings that hung in the Ferri chapel at S. Giovanni in Monte, Bologna. These were relatively modest but beautifully executed paintings (at least as far as can be judged from the St. Joseph, the pendant to which does not survive). As Turner explains, they were the first works that Guercino had painted for a church in Bologna in over a decade. One wonders whether the commission thus had an importance for the artist that went beyond the canvases' small scale, which could explain the notably high quality of both the paintings and this preparatory drawing. Though it is unlikely that at this point in his career Guercino would have required a posing model, the child here has a frank appearance that makes it seem to be a study from life, and the drawing has a specificity and attention to detail that go beyond that of many of the artist's other figure studies from the later 1630s. The secondary study of the child's right arm at the lower left of the sheet and the fall of light and shadow across his body both make absolutely clear the relationship between the drawing and painting, although the child's gaze off to the left in the drawing suggests that he was originally conceived to be placed to the right of St. Joseph. -- Catalog entry: Guercino : virtuoso draftsman, Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 80