Lot 29
  • 29

Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato

Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 GBP
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Description

  • Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato
  • The Virgin of the Rose
  • oil on canvas

Provenance

With the Heim Gallery, Paris, 1975, from whom acquired by the present owner

Condition

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a recent stretcher and wax and resin lining, probably from the seventies. The present restoration presumably dates from the same period. There is some fairly marked horizontal craquelure mainly in the lower half of the painting, with a few retouchings and lost old flakes associated with this, including a line of retouchings by the ear of the Child, around the thumb of the Madonna nearby and on her veil near His face, with one little line of retouching by her mouth and one or two in His body. Above her head there is a small retouching and another in the trees at upper right, with others in the background landscape and in the sky. The edges have been rather fractured, especially in the upper right corner in the sky, and the sky and landscape edge is quite widely touched in, with some slight wear in the landscape. The deeper blue glazing in the drapery has been worn and lightly strengthened in places, but elsewhere the drapery is rather well preserved, particularly the red curtain, and the glazed modelling in the flesh is largely finely preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Catalogue Note

For the composition of the present painting Sassoferrato followed a design by Simon Vouet (see the painting in the Musée Lonchamp, Marseille) which he probably knew through Claude Mellan's 1638 engraving.1  At least four other upright variants are known with differences in the background, and an oval verson was sold in these Rooms 5 July 2007, lot 195 for £38,000.

We are grateful to M. François Mace de Lepinay for confirming the attribution to Sassoferrato on the basis of photographs.

1. W.R. Crelly, The Paintings of Simon Vouet, London 1962, p. 178, no. 64.