(Sassoferrato 1609–1685 Rome)
The Madonna in prayer,
oil on canvas, 75 x 62 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galerie de Londres, Buenos Aires:
Private collection, Buenos Aires;
art market, USA;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to François Macé de Lépinay for confirming the attribution on the basis of a digital photograph.

During the course of his career Sassoferato produced devotional easel paintings and particularly Marian representations, of which the present painting is an example of especial quality.

The Madonna is represented half-length with her hands held in prayer. Her gaze is turned to the heavens and her head is slightly tilted back. She wears her typical blue mantle and her head and shoulders are covered by a white veil that almost has the same ivory tone as her skin. This rendering, although half-length, derives from Sassoferato’s large scale composition of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Musée Massey, Tarbes, which was in turn inspired by works by Guido Reni. Indeed, Sassoferato was profoundly influenced by Emilian classical tradition of painting and the purity of Renaissance art as embodied by Raphael, whose work he was able to study during his formative Roman period.

Sassoferato represented the Madonna in prayer on numerous occasions over the course of his career and several renderings and variants on this theme exist, such as the canvas in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, and that in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. These works demonstrate the immense success Sassoferato´s devotional paintings enjoyed. These compostions communicate an intense purity, made at a time when, in the wake of counter-reformation directives, the Marian cult attained renewed importance.