A study for the two figures on the far right of The Martyrdom of St Bartholomew, an altarpiece commissioned for the church San Martino in Siena in 1635-36 and now lost (Fig.1). The commission was one of the most important projects undertaken by Guercino during the 1630s and provoked a particularly fine group of studies in which the artist explored solutions for what was undoubtedly a difficult subject.

The present drawing can be included among these for the first time. Only two sheets focus on the secondary characters in the painting; ours and a study at the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, for the revelatory angel in the top register of the painting. All the others are concerned with the character of Bartholomew and the figures immediately around him.

The present drawing corresponds relatively closely to the finished picture; the soldier’s gesture in the painting is less animated, while he and the bearded man behind him no longer direct their gaze upwards toward the angel. Guercino sketched out two possibilities for the soldier’s right arm and hand, one in which he leans on a stick and one in which he reaches across his chest for a knife. In the end he retained the first solution with some alterations. It is a good illustration of the complex practice that lay behind Guercino’s creative process. He rarely drew finished composition studies, instead relying on a fluid series of sketches for single figures or groups of figures, which were subject to constant change and development. The violence of the soldier’s gesture and the terror in the old man’s expression are less pronounced in the finished picture.

Bartholomew was one of the twelve apostles and according to the traditional account he was flayed alive and then crucified with his head downwards. A correspondent to this New Testament story in antiquity is the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo, a subject that was also treated by Guercino.