The Return of the Prodigal Son

In 1616 Alessandro Ludovisi, archbishop of Bologna and the future Pope Gregory XV, was sent to Savoy as a papal envoy. Duke Charles Emmanuel I was quarrelling with Spain over Monferrato, a marquisate on his eastern border, and Ludovisi's task was to help settle it. The following year, in Bologna, he had Guercino paint this canvas. How it reached Turin is not recorded. The museum suggests that his good relations with the Savoy court, and with the duke's son Cardinal Maurizio, opened the way, and by 1631 the picture was listed in the Savoy collections.

The young man kneels on the steps of his father's house to ask forgiveness for the money he has wasted. The museum sees Caravaggio behind two of the figures. The prodigal recalls the kneeling pilgrims of the Madonna of Loreto in Rome, and the servant behind the old father wears clothes like those of the young man in Caravaggio's Fortune Teller, now in the Louvre.