(Sassoferrato 1609–1685 Rome)
Madonna in Prayer,
oil on copper, 22 x 17.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection

We are grateful to François Macé de Lépinay for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high-resolution digital photograph.

This small work on copper represents one of the most celebrated subjects from Sassoferrato’s oeuvre. The Virgin is shown in prayer, with her hands together and her gaze downturned, her head slightly inclined; emphasising her ivory skin tone, she wears the typical blue mantle with a white veil over her head and shoulders.

The compositional elegance, the enamel-like application of paint and the purity of the representation attest to the great pictorial quality of this work. Moreover, its small dimensions and its particular copper support make this painting a statement of precious refinement. It is therefore likely that this work once belonged in the private oratory of a high-ranking prelate.

Over the course of his career Sassoferrato repeatedly painted the Madonna in Prayer, and various versions of the subject exist, such as one on canvas, of larger dimensions than the present work, which is conserved in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (inv. no. 81LC00215).

The simplicity and sobriety of the composition made this one of the most effective and iconic images of the seventeenth century, a time when the Marian cult, thanks to the directives of the Counter Reformation, gained new traction. In this context Sassoferrato’s intense yet tender production of religious subjects, largely conceived for private use, attained great success. The artist’s aspiration to restore a timeless ideal of beauty looked back to the high Renaissance, and especially to Raphael, and it precociously promoted the recovery of a devotional register.

Giovanni Battista Salvi called il Sassoferrato after his native city in the Marches was principally active in central Italy. After initial 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 classical painters, the Carracci and Guido Reni, as well as fostering his admiration for Renaissance art which he wished 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 appreciated as a portraitist but above all he became celebrated for his highly refined religious cabinet paintings were characterised by a quiet, private, intimacy, which is apparent in the present work.