Follower of Giovanni Batista Salvi

Follower of GIOVANNI BATISTA SALVI "SASSOFERRATO" (Sassoferrato, 1609 - Rome, 1685); Italy, 17th century.
"Madonna."
Oil on canvas glued to board.
Presents faults.
Measurements: 58 x 43 cm; 69 x 53,5 cm (frame).
The bust of Mary emerges strongly from a golden background, cut by a beam of intense light that illuminates her face and the fold of her mantle. Mary's idealized features and the modeling of the mantle clearly refer to the Bolognese school, renowned for its balanced classicism and its distance from the more extreme tenebrism of 17th century Italian Baroque. This combination of emotional intensity and formal harmony gives the work a sober elegance, in which dramatism is contained by ideal beauty.
The piece follows the iconographic model spread by Giovanni Battista Salvi, known as Il Sassoferrato, an Italian Baroque painter famous for his devotional images. In them he masterfully fused the classicism of Bolognese roots with the expressive use of light inherited from Caravaggio. The enormous popularity of these models, reproduced and reinterpreted on many occasions, explains the difficulty often posed by the certain attribution of works within this stylistic field.