MADRID.- The museum is presenting a selection of works by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Cento, 1591-Bologna, 1666), known as Il Guercino, one of the most prominent figures of northern Italian Baroque painting. Centred on one of the artist’s masterpieces, Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well (ca.1640-41) from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, the exhibition brings together a group of five further key paintings which together allow for an analysis of how the artist approached the image of women in biblical narratives. These works, which have been loaned from other institutions such as the Museo Nacional del Prado, the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg, also reflect Guercino’s narrative skill and mastery of gestural language, while simultaneously demonstrating his stylistic evolution.

Guercino's choice of this subject matter was not accidental, given that narratives of biblical heroines were extremely popular in the 17th century. Deploying his particular style, the artist was able to convey the characters' emotions through gesture, in a reflection of what has been termed the drama or aesthetic degli affetti [of the emotions], inherent to the type of images promoted by the Counter-Reformation and cultivated in Seicento Bolognese painting by artists such as Guido Reni and Domenichino, among others.

The first pair of paintings depicts anonymous women from the New Testament who embody the model of the repentant sinner: Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well, in which the two figures express themselves through a play of glances and coded gestures, and The Woman taken in Adultery (ca. 1621), in which the treatment of light and shadow articulates the dialogue between Christ and the Pharisees while also emphasising the vulnerability of the female figure, depicted in a withdrawn and downcast attitude

Displayed alongside these works in the same room are two Old Testament scenes in which Guercino conveys the innocence of two victims of unjust situations. Susannah and the Elders (1617) narrates the episode in which Susannah is observed by lustful judges while bathing in a fountain, a composition in which the female figure stands out against the dark background and in which the viewer becomes a witness to the aggression. In contrast, in Abraham Casting out Hagar and Ishmael (1657) Guercino depicts Abraham expelling his servant Hagar and their son Ishmael from his house, emphasising the expression of emotions through a theatrical composition.

The last section in the exhibition is devoted to women considered femme fatales in traditional Christian iconography but whom Guercino interpreted in an innovative way. In contrast to the idea of Delilah as a new Eve who leads man to perdition, in Samson and Delilah (1654) the artist presents her as a female warrior who contributes to the salvation of her people. Finally, in Salome Receiving the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1637), Salome is shown as repentant and with her head bowed in a depiction that differs from the traditional presentation of her as a seductive young woman, rather showing her as a victim of her mother's desires.