Guercino and his Biblical Heroines
The museum is hosting a small exhibition featuring a carefully chosen group of works by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Cento, 1591-Bologna, 1666), better known as Il Guercino, a key figure in the development of Baroque painting in northern Italy. Centred on the masterpiece by the artist in the collection of the Museo Thyssen, Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well (ca. 1640-41), the exhibition brings together a series of key paintings, the study of which reveals how Guercino approached the image of women in biblical narratives. In order to do so, the exhibition also includes works loaned from other institutions.
Guercino and his Biblical Heroines allows for a detailed analysis of the importance of the representation of the female figure in the artist's religious paintings through works that depict a number of biblical episodes in which women are the protagonists. These include Susanna and the Elders (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado), Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery (London, Dulwich Picture Gallery) and Samson and Delilah (Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts).
This selection of six canvases highlights Guercino’s narrative abilities and mastery of gestural language in compositions in which women embody various biblical figures through the painter's highly personal vision. Anonymous women from the New Testament, such as the woman of Samaria and the adulteress, personify the model of the repentant sinner. Also on display in this gallery are Susanna and the Elders and Abraham casting out Hagar and Ishmael, in which Guercino aimed to convey the innocence of two victims of unjust situations narrated in the Old Testament. The final section is devoted to women seen as the femme fatale in traditional Christian iconography and which the painter revived in order to give them a new role. Delilah wields the scissors to cut Samson's hair herself in an image which is that of a classical heroine, while Salome, with her head bowed, does not so much embody a seductive young woman as a victim subject to her mother's desires, as stated in the biblical account.
Curator: María Eugenia Alonso
