Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato

Central Picture Galleries, New York
Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., New York (acquired from the above)
His sale: Sotheby's, New York, June 1, 1989, lot 65
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman.

Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum, January 1976
Detroit Institute of Arts, 1989- 1991 (on loan, no. T1989.286)

Sassoferrato was named after his hometown, which lies in the eastern Apennines between Florence and Rome, as was common practice among artists in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. The artist received his early training under the Bolognese master Domenichino, but it was the work of Guido Reni and above all Raphael (lot 8) that exerted the greatest influence over Sassoferrato's work. The latter's impact is clearly discernible in this luminous Madonna and Child, which derives from Raphael's Mackintosh Madonna, today in the National Gallery, London (inv. NG 2069; see fig. 1 for Raphael's cartoon drawing for the picture; K. Oberhuber, Raphael: The Paintings, Milan, 1999, vol. II, cat. no. 49).

Though Sassoferrato may have seen Raphael’s original during his time in Rome (or perhaps through a lost print by Raphael’s principal print maker, Marcontonio Raimondi), he may have also been exposed to the composition through a Madonna with Saints Gregory and Nicholas by the Perugian artist Domenico Alfani (1479-80 - after 1553), today in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia.  Alfani’s picture employs the same composition found here, and Sassoferrato would have almost certainly seen the work given his extended stay in Perugia, where from 1630 he was under the employ of the Benedictine convent of San Pietro for the execution of ten canvases for the convent's church (in situ).

Sassoferrato specialized in the production of private devotional works, and was primarily employed by his patrons to provide images for personal spiritual contemplation. Whilst many of the artist’s works are known in multiple autograph versions, no doubt a function of their widespread popularity, the present design is rare and repeated mostly by anonymous members of the artist's circle. Such extant examples are located in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (inv. no. 58AC00387); Galleria Borghese, Rome (inv. no. 382); and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. A3423).

We are grateful to Professor François Macé de Lepinay for his endorsement of the attribution to Sassoferrato on the basis of photographs.