(Bologna 1583 – circa 1640 Rome)
Madonna and Child,
oil on canvas, 75.5 x 59.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Daniele Benati for suggesting the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

The present painting of the Madonna and Child, by Giovanni Giacomo Sementi, reveals an artist who was profoundly influenced by the work of Guido Reni. Sementi’s initial training took place in the studio of Denys Calvaert, from whom he derived the late Mannerist, iridescent pallette, which typifies his early work. In the early years of the seventeenth century however, Sementi started a fruitful collaboration with Reni along with his colleague, Francesco Gessi.

In 1615–20 he collaborated with Gessi and Bartolomeo Marescotti under the direction of Reni, who provided the preparatory drawings for the frescoes in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral of Ravenna. Satisfied with the result, in 1618 Reni sent the well-tested team, made up of Sementi, Gessi and Marescotti, to paint frescos in the Villa Favorita in Toscolano for Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga.

Sementi also collaborated with Francesco Albani on the mythological and allegorical frescoes for Palazzo Giustiniani (now Odescalchi) in Bassano di Sutri. From the 1620s he was based in Rome where he spent the rest of his career. Significantly, Sementi was one of the few Bolognese painters to receive a biography by Giovanni Baglione (see G. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architettori dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII fino a tutto quello d’Urbano VIII, Rome [1642] 1970, pp. 344-345).