Following models of Giovanni Batista Salvi; Italy, 17th century.

Following models of GIOVANNI BATISTA SALVI "Il Sassoferrato" (Sassoferrato, 1609 - Rome, 1685); Italy, 17th century.
"Madonna and Child."
Oil on canvas.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 58 x 46 cm; 70 x 58 cm (frame).
Sassoferrato achieved great fame thanks to his devotional images in which the Virgin was usually the protagonist. As in this particular case the artist relies on the aesthetics and popularized compositions of Salvi and presents us with the bust of the Queen of Heaven in a humble and sweet way holding her son in her arms, following the model of the work attributed to Sassoferrato that is in the National Museum of Armenia.
Giovanni Battista Salvi, better known as "Il Sassoferrato", began his training with his father, a local painter, in his homeland of the Marche. He then entered the workshop of Domenichino in Rome, where he developed most of his career. He soon achieved great success, which lasted even after his death, thanks to the realization of a type of devotional paintings based on formulations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly of painters such as Perugino, Raphael or Dürer. His most frequent subjects were Madonnas, alone or in the Holy Family, and saints. The activity of Salvi was particularized in the private sphere with a restricted committee, formed mainly by different characters of the curia. The fact that Sassoferrato specialized in the production of paintings of an exclusively devotional nature, following the model of the icons, cannot be described as archaism. Rather, it reflects his accommodation to Bolognese taste. Nor can these preferences be understood as a provincial development, since the painter was mainly active in Rome. Rather than an isolated stylistic phenomenon, Sassoferrato's artistic production has been considered a sophisticated variant of the classicist tendencies always present in Roman seicentesque painting. His sweetly idealized virgin figures, such as the one we are dealing with in this Holy Family, had an important reception. His work is preserved in important institutions such as the National Gallery in London, the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Barberini Palace in Rome, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, among others.