ENGLISH VERSION Il Libro dei conti del Guercino (1629-1666). Con una recensione di Marco Carminati, Nuova Alfa, 1997

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro

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Il Libro dei conti del Guercino

(1629-1666)

A cura di Barbara Ghelfi

Consulenza scientifica di Sir Denis Mahon

Nuova Alfa editoriale, 1997

Isbn 88-777-9512-3

[1] The first edition of the Libro dei conti (The book of accounts) was published in 1808 by Jacopo Calvi, as a part of Notizie della vita e delle opere del cavaliere Gio. Francesco Barbieri detto il Guercino da Cento (News on the life and works of the cavalier Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino from Cento). In 1841 (or a few years later), the editors of the second edition of Malvasia's Felsina Pittrice republished both Calvi’s Notizie as well as the Libro dei conti in the second volume. 

[2] By kind permission of the author, you find below the review published on the Italian daily ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’ on 15^th February 1998, a few months after the release of the work (the article - signed by Marco Carminati - is taken from the ‘Multimedia library of Sole 24 Ore - Cd Rom Domenica 1983-2003 Twenty years of ideas’. An original of the article is however also part of the volume).

Paintings’ prices, subjects and clients in the “Libro dei conti” compiled by the painter between 1629 and 1666

Guercino’s invention? Fixed prices

by Marco Carminati

Let us try to picture ourselves in Seventeenth century’s Italy, and to need doing a rapid investigation on rates applied by painters most à la mode, active in that century between Bologna and Rome. The first thing that you will come to notice is that artists did not reckon their fees on a time basis, or on the energy spent or on the size of the pictures. The unity of measure was the number of "heads" or "figures" inserted in the painting: the highest the number of heads, the most they were paid. To understand, however, how much customer should pay a single head was not easy, because of the absence of any kind of rule around the determination of rates per capita.

Domenichino, for example, skilfully avoided to offer fixed rates; thus, depending on whom he had in front of him, he could afford to shoot wildly floating prices. He behaved like this at least until 1621, when his fee flattened around 100 ducats for figure.

Francesco Albani went further: he managed to ask an amazing fixed salary to Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, for whom he had produced the frescoes in the Villa Favorita, but the duke dismissed him away quite rudely, calling him a "impertinentissimo pretensore" (really impertinent charlatan).

Much softer was the strategy of Guido Reni, who preferred to leave to the customer the bidding process, but reserved himself the prerogative to negotiate a last-minute increase of his honorarium or to pretend an integrative gift. Providing gifts to artists was a very common habit of remuneration, as evidenced by the case of Marcantonio Franceschini, who very often let pay himself the paintings against underwear, silverware, furniture and even boxes of candy and chocolate.

The only artist who was proud of applying a fixed price to his paintings was Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino. The painter had a clever commercial intuition, because agreeing a determined price a priori facilitated agreements between the parties, immediately clarified purchasing modalities and allowed him more easily to reach geographically distant customers. In a letter dated June 8, 1639 the same Guercino refers to his fee: "For entire figures I am paid at least one hundred silver ducats each, for the half-figures fifty."

The myth of the fixed price of Guercino has survived over the centuries; and now that a new complete edition has been made available of his famous Libro dei conti curated by Barbara Ghelfi with a scientific assistance by Sir Denis Mahon (Nuova Alfa Editoriale), it is possible to verify how much this belief had really materialised. The Libro dei conti is a manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio in Bologna and contains the list of the works carried out by the school of Guercino 1629-1666, with the detailed specification of the subjects of the paintings, their selling prices and the names of clients, buyers and intermediaries. Attached to the book around forty loose sheets are also preserved, in which the workshop accountants listed works sold, rents collected and coupons of ‘expired fruits’, that is accrued interests.

Needless to say, this dry account register is actually a document of enormous importance both for the knowledge of the works by Guercino (listed in a much greater number of those now preserved), as well as for the understanding of the business model with which its well established workshop was run.

The book covers a time span of over 30 years and was compiled by three laymen acting as accountants: the painter Paolo Antonio Barbieri, brother of Guercino, who took charge of the compilation from 1629 until the year of his sudden death in 1649; Guercino himself, which took over the compilation of registers between 1649 and 1665, drafting them with a sloppy writing and filling many inaccuracies into them; and finally, their nephew Benedetto Gennari, who assumed the commitment of the recordings in the last year of life of the uncle (1666).

At a first glance, it is confirmed that the painter had posted in the walls of the workshop a symbolic tariff chart for paintings: 25 ducats for a head, 50 for a half-length, 100 for a full figure. Inevitably, these figures increased over the years, and when, after the death of Guido Reni (1642), Guercino won the primacy of the art market in Bologna, its rates rose significantly: 30 ducats for a head , 60 for a half-length , until the climax of the 190 ducats required in 1660 for a simple head bust.

Looking at the lists in detail, however, we observe that these rules were not always followed. Guercino often offered discounts to customers, friends or neighbours, allowed ecclesiastical authorities to pay in instalments, and applied lump sums for large altarpieces, which he usually sold for 300-400 ducats each. He also tended to increase prices of the paintings for clients outside Emilia, perhaps because he shifted freight charges and brokerage fees to the recipient; finally, he almost never disdained to round his compensation with gratuities or gifts of various kinds.

Those who came to him belonged to all grades of the civil and ecclesiastical hierarchies: there was the great nobility from Emilia and Rome, the cardinals in charge of Bologna and Ferrara (so-called ‘cardinali legati’, who introduced him in Rome); the ecclesiastical orders, the chapters of cathedrals, confraternities, and even the members of the middle and small sized merchant bourgeoisie, probably encouraged to address him by his legendary fixed prices. In addition, Guercino had to deal with numerous brokers and agents for third parties, which sually belonged to the lower social classes: farm managers in convents, housekeepers of nobles, artists and "art connoisseurs" of the second and third category.

Judging from the earnings, the master from Emilia was loved and courted for decades, even if the reading of the financial statements shows that, when years advanced, he was less and less requested: in the golden years of his career, around 1650, the artist came to also earn four thousand crowns a year, but only ten years later his income would barely exceed the limit of one thousand.

The last work that the artist sold a "painting with the Earth Trinity" (now in the church of San Giuseppe in Pinerolo), paid 250 ducats from "Mr. Peter Cattanio”. After that the record book closes. There is just enough room for the last note, pencilled by his nephew Gennari: "On 22^nd December 1666, my uncle Mr Giovanni Francesco Barbieri ended his days and his glorious labors”.