Alabaster Paintings. XVII Century. Saint Jerome And St. John Baptist. After Guercino.

A pair of Paintings on Alabaster.
17th century. After 1650.
Saint Jerome and St. John the Baptist.
Follower of Guercino (Cento, 1591 - 1666, Bologna)
The two small-format paintings reveal the collection destination of these works, intended for a refined collector with an up-to-date and modern taste of the time, who wanted to have two objects almost in a sense of Cabinet of curiosity.
In fact, the technique of the paintings, oil on alabaster, was in vogue in the Baroque era—rare, bizarre, with the veins of the stone camouflaging and blending with the brushstrokes and elements of the painted landscape.
These two rare paintings, in original frames with ebony, were created after two originals by Guercino.
Both frames bear fire marks on the reverse.
The first painting, St John the Baptist in the Desert, was executed by Guercino in 1650 for the Ridolfini Chapel in the church of the Rosario at Cento. Nowadays, this monumental painting, Oil on canvas: 321 x 196 cm, is part of the collection of Cento, Pinacoteca Civica.
The second painting, from which our composition derives, St Jerome in Ecstasy, was created in 1650. It is currently housed in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. St. Jerome, seated in front of his books, with the shiny bell of a trumpet poking through the clouds in the upper left. Alabaster veins create an illusionistic view of the silhouette of clouds.
We thank expert Wladyslaw Maximowicz for valuable iconographic and bibliographic advice.