God the Father, with His right hand on the terrestrial globe and, flanked by the dove of the Holy Spirit, turns His gaze downwards towards the scene depicted in the painting below. In fact, the work was the superior completion of a large altarpiece depicting the Circumcision of Jews, created by Guercino at the end of 1646 for the high altar of the Augustinian church of Gesù e Maria in Bologna. The large altarpiece, not part of the exhibition, was removed by the French in 1796 and sent to Lyon, where it remains today, while the painting God the Father was sent to the Bologna Pinacoteca.
According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia, the Eternal Father was painted by Guercino “in a single night by the light of a torch” to replace an early version that proved to be too big: the prodigious rapidity of execution aroused the admiration of his contemporaries.    
Indeed, we are struck by the spontaneity and self-assurance of the brushstroke, the flickering of the plays of light on the furrowed forehead and the soft, nuanced rendering of the beard and hair.