Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato

The seventeenth-century painter Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato, produced this pious devotional work early in his career, when still working in Perugia. Likely painted for a private patron, the work is characteristic of the artist's immensely popular renditions of humble, yet dignified, depictions of the Madonna. Solidly modelled and possessing a sculptural weightiness, the Virgin Mother is seen nearly life-size. With divinely-lit features, she recalls the Madonnas of Raphael, an important source of artistic inspiration for Sassoferrato.