Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (called Il Guercino)

Nicknamed Guercino ("the squinter") in his youth, this artist from Cento, a small town near Ferrara in the province of Emilia, was already appreciated by important patrons in other parts of Italy when he was in his twenties. In 1621, he was called to Rome by the newly elected pope Gregory XV, who also hailed from Emilia. Having planned and executed a number of ecclesiastical and private commissions, Guercino returned to his hometown after Gregory's death in 1623. Nevertheless, he became internationally renowned; his work was sought after in France by Marie de' Medici, for example. When Guido Reni, the leading painter in Bologna, died in 1642, Guercino moved and lived there until his death. The house he bought in Bologna, later called the Casa Gennari, housed his studio and subsequently that of his nephews and heirs, Benedetto and Cesare Gennari, and their families.

The documentation of Guercino's works is remarkably good, because he kept a record of payments for his commissions in an account book (Libro dei conti) from 1629 until his death in 1666. Additionally, his nephews' family preserved many paintings and drawings until at least 1719, when an inventory was made. Earlier, the seventeenth-century biographer Malvasia had also published a list of Guercino's paintings in the Casa Gennari.