The guardian angel

oil on canvas

124 x 81 cm, in an antique frame 141 x 97
Short video of the work: https://youtu.be/NS3BE_lNUhs

Of great character and excellent quality this precious seventeenth-century altarpiece, which has as its subject the Archangel Raphael with large outstretched wings while protecting the boy Tobiolo: the meaning of this iconography, which spread mainly between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, took on in the time a more extended meaning, thus ending up becoming the emblem of the human soul protected by its guardian angel.

The Guardian Angel is in fact the spiritual entity sent by God to protect every human being, therefore he is represented here with the usual likeness of a handsome young man, with delicate feminine features, with a pair of large white wings, a wide yellow robe. -ocher lined in blue tight at the waist and adorned with a fluttering drape.

The painting is also a sort of portrait of a devout boy, innocently half-naked and with eyes turned to the sky, where the light of divine grace appears through a hole in the clouds.

The executive technique and stylistic features agree with those of a work datable to the first half of the seventeenth century, which manifests the characteristics of a talented artist of the Ferrara and BoIognese school, informed on the most important pictorial novelties spread by Guide Reni and above all by Guercino, in II. interior of the prestigious workshop where the painting in question was produced.

In fact, the work reveals the typical qualities of those executed inspired by the inventions of Giovan Francesco Barbieri himself, better known with the nickname of Guercino, being a singular replica with variations - The measures are smaller, the colors different and the hilly background - derived from the altarpiece. by Barbieri made in 1641 for the Fano nobleman Vincenzo Nolfi, formerly in the Fano church of S.Agostino (oil on canvas. 292 x 178 cm, currently in storage in the Civic Art Gallery of Fano), of which however it resumes the general layout.

Our canvas therefore shows its evident belonging to the narrow circle of this great Emilian master of the seventeenth century; but certain independent typological characters should not be neglected, of particular pictorial validity and in strict adherence to the ways of Guercino which, in the specific case, correspond to those of the paintings of Bartolomeo Gennari (Conto, 1594 - Bologna, 1661), a painter constantly active alongside the Barbers.

Over the years of his enduring career Bartolomeo devoted himself steadily to the creation of works and derivations from Guercino's compositions, for this reason he is esteemed as one of the best official copyists of the master, who usually assigned him replicas of his best inventions, sometimes intervening person to perfect them and make them difficult to distinguish from the paintings of total Guercinesque autograph.

However, it is good to reiterate that in our Guardian Angel there are close similarities with other autograph paintings of this close collaborator of Barbieri, especially the Blessed San Felice da Cantalice receiving the Child from Mary (Bologna, Convent of the Capuchins), the San Giovanni Evangelist who teaches the disciples (Forlì, Church of San Filippo Neri) and above all the Guardian Angel who chases the devil (Dijon, Musée Magnin), works that evidently repeat the appearance of the two characters portrayed in our canvas allowing us to be attributed to Bartolomeo Gennari.

The painting is completed with a beautiful antique carved and gilded wooden frame.

The painting is in excellent condition and is sold complete with a certificate of authenticity in accordance with the law (FIMA).

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, Il Guercino, Guardian Angel, Civic Malatesta Art Gallery of Fano