Paris, painting goes to auction with estimate of 5,000 euros and sells for 590,000: is it by Guercino?

It could be by Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri; Cento, 1591 - Bologna, 1666) the Moses that was hammered out last November 25 in a sale at the Chayette & Cheval auction house in Paris: presented with an estimate of 5-6,000 euros, it was eventually sold for as much as 590,000 euros, a hundred times the initial estimate.

The work had been attributed to an anonymous follower of Guido Reni, so the auction presented the painting as a work of the 17th-century Bolognese school. The sale in which the Moses was presented featured works from all genres: contemporary and modern artists, early 20th-century prints, jewelry, vases, and works from the 17th and 18th centuries. It was an auction that could have gone quietly unnoticed (most of the works sold for less than a thousand euros), were it not for this 72-by-63-centimeter oil on canvas, which is in a less-than-optimal state, weighed down by color falls, old restorations and, at least judging from the photo, a patina that blurs almost the entire surface, but still evidently not enough to not suggest that the hand that painted the biblical prophet is that of a great artist.

In the card (it was lot 42 of an auction that featured 48), the auction house recalled that an attribution to Guercino had already been made in the past, and mention was made of a copy of this composition, probably painted by Benedetto Zalone, a pupil of Guercino, and passed at auction on May 17, 2001, by Franco Semenzato (but without being sold: the estimate was 70-100 million lire). The Moses is believed to be stylistically and chronologically close to the Head of an Old Man from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, a work from 1619-1620.

We do not know who bought the work, but if it turns out that indeed the work is by Guercino, the unknown buyer may have risen to an excellent investment, because in a possible next sale the price may increase. The auction record for Guercino is £5.19 million, sealed by Christie’s in London in 2010 for a David, which was much larger and definitely more interesting than the Moses at Chayette & Cheval: however, if the Moses were really by Guercino, it could be worth twice what its new owner paid for it. So all that remains is to wait for a possible restoration of the work, as well as the opinions of the scientific community.

Paris, painting goes to auction with estimate of 5,000 euros and sells for 590,000: is it by Guercino?

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