Lot Essay
This representation of the Madonna at Prayer is known only from a version without a landscape which was offered at Christie's, London, June 27, 1975, lot 96 (£6,500), and from a drawing in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Inv. no. 6053 (see A. Blunt & H.L. Cooke, Roman Drawings at Windsor Castle, 1960, no. 877, p. 103, pl. 31).
Sassoferrato seems to have based the devout pose of the Madonna on Dürer's Virgin at Prayer in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Inv. no. 14.40.633. A bust-length format of Sassoferrato's interpretation of this Madonna exists in a number of autograph versions including that in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, Inv. no. E.950 (see A. Salvioni, Giovan Battista Salvi "Il Sassoferrato", 1990, p. 52, no. 6). The present painting, ultimately inspired by Raphael, includes a lyrical landscape that stems from the Roman classical tradition of landscape painting, a chief exponent of which was Domenichino (1581-1641) in whose workshop Sassoferrato is recorded by Lanzi (see L. Lanzi, La storia pittorica della Italia, 1834, II, p. 152).
Sassoferrato seems to have based the devout pose of the Madonna on Dürer's Virgin at Prayer in the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Inv. no. 14.40.633. A bust-length format of Sassoferrato's interpretation of this Madonna exists in a number of autograph versions including that in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, Inv. no. E.950 (see A. Salvioni, Giovan Battista Salvi "Il Sassoferrato", 1990, p. 52, no. 6). The present painting, ultimately inspired by Raphael, includes a lyrical landscape that stems from the Roman classical tradition of landscape painting, a chief exponent of which was Domenichino (1581-1641) in whose workshop Sassoferrato is recorded by Lanzi (see L. Lanzi, La storia pittorica della Italia, 1834, II, p. 152).