Lot 1556 Nα

The attribution has been confirmed by Nicholas Turner on the occasion of the first appearance of the painting on the market, and consequently published in the 2017 monography of the artist.
A wingless Cupid sits on a white drapery atop a ledge on a wall, looking mischievously into the distance, presumably to see if his fired arrow will meet its target. The chubby infant, so typical of the putti and angels in Guercino's early pictures, is taken from the figure of the Christ Child in the work titled “St William Receiving the Cowl”, Guercino's famous altarpiece painted for the Locatelli Chapel, in S. Gregorio, Bologna, 1620 (ill. 1; now in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna). A derivation from the Bolognese altarpiece, the Cupid is conceived as an independent work and could possibly be based on a tracing made from it, with some variations. Guercino has painted the Cupid with powerful and rapid brushstrokes, with several pentimenti. The Cupid is not the only instance in Guercino's work of a figure being taken from its original compositional context to feature on its own in a smaller canvas intended as a work of art in its own right. This working procedure allowed the artist to capitalize on his formulas, satisfying different patrons with the same invention.