File:The Holy Family with St. John the Baptist) - Quidus Renus, inv (...) fecit LCCN92500442.jpg

Library of Congress

• Catalog: https://lccn.loc.gov/92500442
• Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c00000/3c05000/3c05000/3c05044v.jpg
• Original url: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/92500442/

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• Inscriptions: Lower edge left recto: "Quidus Renus Inv et. fecit." Verso, upper right in red chalk: "K593." Lower right in black chalk: "573." and lower right in brown ink: "B.22."
• Watermark: A fleur des lys within a cartouche with another fleur des lys topping the cartouche with initials BV [?] below (not in Briquet or Churchill).
• Giuseppe Vallardi (1784-1863) Lugt 1223: stamp lower left recto. Probably sold Dec. 10-15, 1860, Paris (according to note on mat). Bradley Collection, stamp on verso.
• Title, attribution, date, subject, and physical description by Diane de Grazia, 2014.
• Bequest; George Lothrop Bradley; 1919.
• The drawing in the Library of Congress cannot be attributed to Reni as the smudgy graphic use of chalk differs from his very clear hatching. In addition, the attribution at lower right appears to be in the same hand as the drawing, something Reni would not have added to his own drawing, but something that would be added to a print. The framing in red chalk also indicates a copy after a defined composition. Dating of the drawing is difficult, but the dark color of the red chalk hints that it may belong to the eighteenth century. Nicholas Turner attributes a drawing in red chalk in the collection of Ann Searle Bent as a preparatory study in reverse for Bartsch 11. (Capturing the Sublime. Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque. ed. Suzanne Folds McCullagh with the assistance of Kate Tierney Powell, exh. cat., The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2012, p. 250, cat. A21, illustrated). Based on the style of the drawing, he suggests a date of ca. 1620 for the etching. This would suggest that the terminus post quem of the drawing in the Library of Congress is ca. 1620; however, it could be much later.
• This drawing seems to be a copy after a well-known etching attributed to Guido Reni (Bartsch 11), the 17th-century Bolognese artist whose elegant paintings earned him the sobriquet, "Il Divino." (See Adam van Bartsch, The Illustrated Bartsch 40 (formerly volume 18 (part 2) Italian Masters of the Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Veronika Birke, New York, 1982.) The print is one of three related compositions of this subject: Bartsch 9-11. It is possible that the drawing is instead a copy of one of the copies of Bartsch 11, catalogued by Bartsch as no. 11A. The platform on which St. John the Baptist stands has a clear design in both this drawing and in Bartsch 11A, and the stepped up wall behind the vase is similar in both. Changes between the drawing and print exist in the simplification of forms in the drawing: for example, in the elimination of the divine light coming from the upper right corner in the print and the rocks and grass in the lower right of the print. Whether the drawing is a copy of Bartsch 11 or of Bartsch 11A, it is one of numerous drawn and etched copies of the composition. According to Veronika Birke, neither Bartsch 10 nor 11 may have been executed by Reni himself, although the compositions certainly originate with him. (Adam van Bartsch. The Illustrated Bartsch 40 (Commentary, Part I). Italian Masters of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by Veronika Birke, New York, 1987, p. 287.)
• Conserved: 08-82-017.20.
• Condition assessment: Somewhat dirty. framed in red chalk, 2014.