(Sassoferrato 1609–1685 Rome)
Madonna in prayer,
oil on canvas, 31 x 23.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

This small work shows the Madonna in prayer, with her hands together, her gaze upturned and her head slightly inclined. She wears the typical blue mantle, while her red garment emphasises the ivory tone of her skin. Her white veil falls symmetrically over her head and shoulders and forms a pointed shape over her brow.

The compositional elegance, the small dimensions, the enamel-like application of paint and the purity of the representation are typical traits of Sassoferrato. Over the course of his career, he repeatedly painted the Madonna in prayer, and various versions of this composition exist. One such canvas, of larger dimensions than the present work, is in the Pinacoteca Comunale, Cesena (inv. no. 38) and a number of variants derive from this such as that in the Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence (inv. no. 860-I-373) and another in the Fondazione Cavallini Sgarbi (see M. Pulini, in: Lotto, Artemisia, Guercino: le stanze segrete di Vittorio Sgarbi, exhibition catalogue, ed. By P. Di Natale, Cinisello Balsamo 2016, cat. no. 37).

The simplicity and sobriety of Sassoferrato’s compositions of the Madonna in prayer made these among the most moving and iconic images of the seventeenth century, a time when the Marian cult, thanks to the directives of the Counter Reformation, had gained new significance. In this context Sassoferrato’s intense, but tender production of religious subjects, largely conceived for private use, attained great popularity. By stylistically referring to the high Renaissance, and especially to Raphael, the artist aspired to restore a classical ideal of beauty.

Giovanni Battista Salvi, better known by the name of his native city, Sassoferrato in the Marches, was principally active in central Italy. After initially training with his father, he made a crucial formative journey to Rome where he entered the studio of Domenichino. This experience brought him into direct contact with the leading classical painters: the Carracci and Guido Reni, and it instilled and fostered his admiration for Renaissance art which he sought to emulate. Indeed, Sassoferrato’s painting style is characterised by a refined archaism which refers back to the great masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Sassoferrato was greatly esteemed as a portraitist, but above all he was celebrated for his highly refined religious cabinet-paintings, characterised by the quiet and private intimacy apparent in the present work.