Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Louis of France Venerating an Image of the Virgin

Study for a painting by Guercino dated 1618 (by an inscription in the lower right corner: "FILIJ EQUITIS LUDOVICI / NALDIJ FIERI CURARUNT / 1618") in the Church of San Francesco at Brisighella (Faenza). William Griswold (1991) states that the Museum’s sheet is from an early stage in the preparatory design process and that a related study in Stuttgart (Staatsgalerie, Schloss-Fachsenfeld Coll.) is closer to the executed painting. Other studies related to this commission are the recto and verso of a sheet featuring small, sketchy studies for a kneeling St. Francis, dated 1618 (London, British Museum, inv. no. 1946,0713.721; see: Turner and Plazzotta, 1991, no. 9).

A date of 1618 may be determined independently of the documented commission through comparison with other drawings from the artist's early Roman period. Other pen and ink studies, likewise in preparation for an altarpieces, are the Metropolitan Museum's own ‘Youth Kneeling before a Prelate’ (08.227.29r and v), for a project of 1620 and those for ‘St. William Receiving the Monastic Habit’, a painting dated to 1620. The pen style in drawings for these projects, in particular, St William Receiving the Monastic Habit (Royal Library, Windsor, RL 2475), features a rather rapid and loose, modulating line with close parallel hatching, rather than wash, for shading (see: Turner and Plazzotta, 1991, nos. 26-28).