Alexo Wandael
On View, a Guercino With a Back Story
Alexo Wandael

A painting of St. Sebastian, acquired by The Sopranos actor Federico Castelluccio, left, at a German auction for a reported $70,000 and then confirmed to be a work from the 1630s by the Italian baroque painter Guercino, is making its U.S. debut through the end of January at the Princeton University Art Museum. Castelluccio, an artist and art collector who played the character Furio Giunta in The Sopranos, purchased the painting on a hunch that it was a lost work by Guercino, as the artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri was known. Based on the value of other paintings by the artist, it could be worth several million dollars, according to press reports. Castelluccio will take part in a Jan. 21 campus panel discussion about the painting.