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Item Description / Dealer Expertise
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Other than a few public commissions Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato, painted mainly small devotional pictures for private clients and the Madonna at prayer was one of his most popular subjects. Like the Florentine artist Carlo Dolci (1616-1686), Salvi seems to have concentrated on producing multiple versions of this devotional image to meet the ever increasing demand being fuelled by the fervent Marian cult of the counter-reformation. The ‘Madonna at prayer’ was produced in various formats: half-length, as seen in the present example; with the Madonna’s eyes raised in prayer (e.g. Ferrara, Fondazione Sgarbi-Cavallini); a cropped image focusing on the Madonna’s head (Stockholm, National Museum of Fine Arts); and, demonstrating the influence of Albrecht Durer on his work, (Virgin and Child with Half a Pear, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) with the Madonna wearing a northern headdress (e.g. Perugia, Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria). The influence of Guido Reno, for example in the composition the delicate colouring and emotional subtlety of Salvi’s work, is evident from Reni’s Madonna of the Annunciation. All Salvi’s known images of the Madonna are now thought to have been catalogued and reveal a consistently high quality in execution.
Salvi was known by the name of his birth town, Sassoferrato, in the Marches area of central Italy. He was primarily active in nearby Urbino and other central Italian cities and was first apprenticed under his father, the painter, Tarquinio Salvi. Later whilst in Naples, though the dates are undocumented, he spent a good while as the pupil of the Bolognese artist Domenico Zampieri (1581-1642), known as Domenichino, who had previously worked as the main apprentice of Annibale Carraci (1560-1609). Salvi was also greatly influenced by two other pupils of Carracci, Francesco Albani (1578-1660) and Guido Reni (1575-1642).
The precise draughtsmanship and choice of colouring alongside the sweet and ‘quattrocentesque’ style of his devotional work, unlike his more progressive Baroque contemporaries, led many eighteenth and nineteenth century historians to believe Salvi was a contemporary of Raphael (1483-1520) and his tutor Perugino (c.1445-1523). In 1641 Salvi was working in Rome having received the commission to fresco the sacristy of San Francesco di Paolo, and in 1643 he was commissioned to paint a canvas for the Chapel of Santa Caterina in Santa Sabina to replace a lost work of Raphael. Salvi’s resulting work, the Madonna of the Rosary, still in situ, is perhaps his best known and most celebrated work and demonstrates his painstaking craftsmanship and skilful use of brilliant colour. He produced few other altarpieces or large compositions, preferring to work on a smaller scale, mostly on sacred subjects, although he did occasionally paint mythological scenes. Salvi’s Virgin Mary now at the National Gallery, London, is one of his later works. From 1650 until his death little is known of Salvi’s activity.
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