Lot 509
  • 509

* Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato Sassoferrato 1609 - 1685 Rome

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Description

  • Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato
  • Madonna and Sleeping Christ Child
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

With Central Picture Galleries, New York, by whom sold to
Marc and Lillian Rojtman in 1959

Catalogue Note

This composition, showing the Madonna enveloping the sleeping Christ Child in a protective gesture, was clearly one of Sassoferrato's most celebrated and most repeated. The design appears to derive from an invention of Guido Reni's, known to us today through contemporary engravings, though no painting of the composition by Reni survives and the coloring and handling is entirely Sassoferrato's own (see The Illustrated Bartsch. Italian Masters of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol. 40 (Commentary, Part 1), formerly vol. 18 (Part 2), New York 1987, pp. 330-7, especially no. 30 C1, reproduced p. 330). Sassoferrato's composition is known in a number of variants, some of which include putti in the upper corners; see, for example, the painting sold, London, Sotheby's, December 17, 1998, lot 64, or that in the Galleria Brignale sale catalogue, Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (reproduced in Giovanni Battista Salvi "il Sassoferrato", exhibition catalogue, Sassoferrato, June 29 - October 14, 1990, pp. 64-5, cat. no. 15). Others are of horizontal format, also including putti in the upper corners; see, for example, the painting in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. This particular variant, of upright format and without putti, is identical to that in two paintings in the Wallace Collection, London (inv. nos. P126 and P565), one in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 129), another in the Musée Calvet, Avignon (op. cit., p. 47, cat. no. 2, reproduced), which is almost certainly a workshop replica, and another - of exceptionally high quality and therefore undoubtedly autograph - sold, London, Sotheby's, July 10, 2002, lot 67 (for £95,000).

The present painting is accompanied by a photocertificate from Professor Erik Larsen dated June 30, 1958 that states that the painting is by Giovanni Battsita Salvi, alias Il Sassoferrato.