(active in Rome and Emilia, circa 1630)
Madonna and Child with the Saint John as infant seated before a pillar in a landscape
oil on canvas, 81.5 x 64.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Herwarth Roettgen for having identified the present painting as a work by this hitherto unidentified master (written communication). Several other scholars had previously ascribed the present painting to an artist from the Emilian School.

Herwarth Roettgen convincingly links the present painting with the Bolognese circle of the Carracci. He identifies it to be by the same artist who executed the frescoes in the apsis of the Chiesa Madonna del Piano in Capranica near Viterbo. The facial types and the treatment of the drapery in the scenes from the life of the Virgin in Capranica are very similarly executed to those in the figure of the Madonna who dominates the foreground of the present painting, seated before a Moorish inspired ruin, probably a motif alluding to a counter Reformatory program.

The exact identity of this artist has been the subject of some scholarly debate, as the commission in Capranica is not documented. The two candidates upon which a consensus has been reached are Francesco Cozza (Stilo 1605–1682 Rome), a pupil of Domenichino, and Antonio Carracci (Venice 1583–1618 Rome) who trained under his uncle Annibale Carracci in Rome. Whilst these two names are still a topic of ongoing discussion among scholars, Herwarth Roettgen, on the basis of its closeness to the style of Domenichino, favors an attribution to Francesco Cozza for the frescoes in Capranica, and subsequently for the present painting.