Guercino

In 1646, Guercino received a commission from Count Alfonso II of Novellara for a painting of Silvio and Dorinda, a work completed and delivered in 1647 and today in Dresden. It depicts an episode from a subplot of Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido: The nymph Dorinda is in love with Silvio, who cares only for the hunt, and she disguises herself as a wolf so that she might watch him. Silvio mistakes Dorinda for his prey and shoots her with an arrow. Seeing this, the shepherd Linco comes to her aid, and Silvio, now fallen in love with Dorinda, offers her the bow so that she can take revenge on him. Only slightly wounded, Dorinda refuses, and, with their love now realized, the couple soon marries. Following his usual practice, Guercino seems to have paid little attention to the format of the final painting as he originally sketched the scene, for what appears as a square or perhaps vertical composition in the drawing would become a horizontal painting. Moreover, as Stampfle and Bean note, the interlocking figures of this drawing were rearranged in the painting, "in the interest of a more classic symmetry and clarity of contour." In his sketch, Guercino nonetheless retained all the energy and bravura pen work of his earlier career, as seen in the looping, calligraphic lines that define Silvio's drapery. Although Guarini died in 1612, when Guercino was still a young man, his Pastor Fido remained popular, especially in and around his native Ferrara. When Giulio Mancini's nephew Giovanni Battista Bandi visited Cento in 1624, for example, he wrote to Mancini describing performances of the play with stage sets designed by Guercino. -- Catalog entry: Guercino : virtuoso draftsman, Morgan Library & Museum, 2019, p. 92