A Child seen from Behind, Standing Between his Mother's Knees

The Bolognese artist Guercino was dubbed the ‘Rembrandt of the south’ for his precocious talent as a draughtsman. This unusually intimate image of motherly care demonstrates his masterly use of red chalk. It draws much of its quality from the contrast between the delicately modelled body of the infant, whose soft skin is rendered by the smudging and stumping of the chalk, and the freely but precisely sketched folds of the mother’s sheltering garments and hand.