CESARE GENNARI (Cento, 1637 - Bologna, 1688) Rest on the Flight into Egypt Oil on canvas, 84.5X73 cm Provenance: Verona, antiquarian market Rome, private collection (as Giovanni Francesco Barbieri known as Guercino) London, Philips, 16 February 1988, lot 36 (as Studio di Giovanni Francesco Barbieri detto il Guercino) New York, Sotheby's (as Federico Zeri) Bologna, private collection Private collection Bibliography: Zeri Archive: no. 59266 (as Cesare Gennari) Son of Ercole and Lucia Barbieri, Guercino's sister, Cesare was baptised on 12 December 1637 in Cento in the collegiate church of San Biagio and began his training in the workshop of his uncle, Giovanni Francesco (Cento, 1591 ; Bologna, 1666), imitating his style so well that 'many of his works are attributed to Guercino himself by those who are not well versed and well-founded connoisseurs' (J. A. Calvi, Notizie della vita e delle opere del cavaliere Gioan Francesco Barbieri detto il Guercino di Cento, Bologna 1808, p. 56). This small biographical parenthesis helps to better interpret the quality of the canvas under examination, which expresses in its dialectic of drawing and drafting those instances that the master manifested in his more purist and classical phase. Nevertheless, the analysis of the fabric and brushstrokes correspond with the style of Cesare Gennari who, by virtue of his talent, inherited the workshop and all its assets, including drawings and sketches, after the master's death. In our case, the quality of the work induced Denis Mahon to judge it to have been completed to a drawing and supervision by Guercino, who may have intervened in the figure of the Child and certain details of the landscape, ruling out the possibility of it being a copy. In this regard, one must recall the words of Carlo Cesare Malvasia who defined Cesare as the pupil to whom Guercino wanted to 'transfuse his own virtue, to make it hereditary in his blood', taking into account precisely these skills of linguistic mimesis that the painter perfected by closely studying the master's works (C.C. Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice, II, Bologna 1678, p. 378). We thank Massimo Pulini for confirming the attribution to Cesare Gennari. Reference bibliography: E. Negro, M. Pirondini and N. Roio, La Scuola del Guercino, Modena 2004, pp. 208-9, 220