Moretti Fine Art opens Paris gallery with rediscovered Guercino painting

Moretti Fine Art, the prestigious Italian Old Master gallery founded by Fabrizio Moretti in Florence in 1999, will open a new Paris location on September 14, 2023. The inaugural exhibition features a rediscovered painting by Baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (1591–1666). The work, titled 'Moses', was acquired at a Paris auction in 2022 attributed to an anonymous follower of Guido Reni from the 17th-century Bolognese school. After provenance research and restoration, it has been reattributed to Guercino, dating to his early period (c. 1618–1619) when he worked in Cento before his Roman sojourn (1621–1623). Fabrizio Moretti called the discovery 'one of the most important additions to Guercino's oeuvre in recent years' and noted it enriches understanding of the artist's early maturity. The painting was first recorded in 1624 in the collection of Cardinal Alessandro d'Este (1568–1624), Guercino's patron in Rome. It later entered the Este ducal collections in Modena, where it remained until the Napoleonic era when it was taken to France, after which its trace was lost until now.