A GUERCINO REDISCOVERED: Italian Baroque Paintings from the Bob Jones Collection

The Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, in association with Townsend Art Advisory LLC, presents a traveling exhibition available for booking from mid-2027 through 2030.

The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to bring these important works to new audiences while the Museum is under construction.

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino (1591–1666), kept a precise record of his artistic production in an account book known as the Libro dei Conti. In it he recorded an altarpiece completed in 1658 for the Capuchin church of Verona, depicting the Virgin and Child appearing to St. Anthony of Padua. The monumental painting was long considered lost. Over recent decades, however, scholars have established that Guercino’s St. Anthony of Padua in the Bob Jones Collection is a fragment of that altarpiece, and that a Virgin and Child in a private collection formed its upper half. Recent conservation and technical analysis illuminate the original composition, which is brought to life through an interactive digital reconstruction.

The exhibition also includes Guercino’s Jacob Mourning over Joseph’s Coat, painted soon after the artist returned north from Rome, alongside thirteen further paintings tracing the enormous impact of the Carracci — Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico — first in Bologna and then in Rome. The Carracci’s fusion of naturalism with the art of the past helped transform seventeenth-century painting and provided a powerful counterpart to the revolutionary art of Caravaggio.

A Guercino Rediscovered brings together a focused group of fifteen paintings — many large-scale — tracing the influence of the Carracci and their followers through works by Guido Reni, Domenichino, Giovanni Lanfranco and others. The exhibition is drawn from the Bob Jones Collection, one of the most significant collections of Old Master paintings in the United States.

The exhibition is organized by the Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University in association with Townsend Art Advisory LLC and curated by Richard P. Townsend.

The exhibition package includes:

• 15 paintings, many large-scale, requiring approximately 100 linear feet, including text panels and labels, and a minimum gallery ceiling height of 12 feet
• An introductory text panel, several section text panels, and 15 individual labels
• An interactive digital reconstruction reuniting St. Anthony of Padua with the original altarpiece composition
• A 96-page full-color hardcover catalogue with cloth-bound spine, published by Skira Editore in English and Italian editions, with contributions by David M. Stone and Richard P. Townsend

Availability: Twelve-week timeslots beginning in mid-2027 through 2030. All listed timeslots are currently open.

Participation fee: $35,000 for twelve weeks, plus pro-rated shipping and insurance.

A Guercino Rediscovered has a companion exhibition, The Lost Rubens: Flemish Baroque Paintings from the Bob Jones Collection, also available from 2027 through 2030. The exhibitions may be booked separately or together.

For full exhibition materials, availability, or to discuss a booking:
CeCe Manganaro
cece@townsendartadvisory.com
(312) 590-2715

Image + credit for exhibition 2
Guercino, St. Anthony of Padua, 1657-58. Museum & Gallery, Bob Jones University.