English: Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri), Cento 1591–1666 Bologna

Boy in a Large Hat, 1630s–40s Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash on beige laid paper 16.5 × 12.1 cm. (6 1/2 × 4 3/4 in.) Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895 x1948-1294

This drawing clearly attests to Guercino’s standing as one of the most creative and prolific caricaturists of the seventeenth century. The word caricature comes from the Italian caricatura, indicating something “loaded” or “charged.” Caricature drawings are “loaded” as they exaggerate specific features or make odd juxtapositions that emphasize difference. Guercino’s caricatures are marvelous examples of his fertile imagination, and of his curiosity and gentle humor, yet at the same time they reveal the artist’s keen and compassionate observation of humanity

Guercino’s caricatures grew out of the revolutionary naturalism in painting developed by the Carracci (Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico) and their followers in Bologna beginning in the early 1580s. The Carracci’s innovative curriculum of drawing instruction emphasized nature’s unidealized beauty as a primary source for artists. Although Leonardo da Vinci had made influential physiognomic studies of old men and women at the beginning of the sixteenth century, these had a scientific focus and a penchant for the grotesque that were quite different from the simple humor produced in the Carracci’s sketches.