Giovanni battista salvi biography meaning

Subjects

Paintings - Artists, Italian - Sassoferrato, 1609-1685

Authors/Creators

Sassoferrato, 1609-1685

Artists/Illustrators

Reni, Guido, 1575-1642

Sassoferrato, 1609-1685

Giovanni Battista Salvi, Il Sassoferrato
Sassoferrato 1609 – 1685 Rome

The Madonna with the sleeping Christ Child

Oil on canvas, relined, 74.9 × 60.7 cm

Minor retouching in two areas of the Virgin’s blue mantle and left sleeve, otherwise the paint surface is intact (restored by Herbert Lank, Hamilton Kerr Institute, 1988).

In a reproduction frame (by Paul Levi, 1988)

provenance anonymous consignor, Christie’s, ‘Old Master and English Pictures’, London, 18 March 1988, lot 97 — the present owner

comparative literature Giovan Battista Salvi ‘Il Sassoferrato’, edited by François Macé De Lepinay (Milan 1990), p.47; Il Sassoferrato: un preraffaellita tra i puristi del Seicento, catalogue of an exhibition, Galleria comunale d'arte, Cesena, 15 May–25 October 2009, edited by Massimo Pulini (Milan 2009), p.23

This ‘Madonna with the sleeping Christ Child’ was one of Sassoferrato’s most popular compositions and was replicated by him many times, with consistently high quality, also in horizontal, oval and smaller formats, reversed, and with the Madonna depicted in Glory and attended by angels. As the artist rarely signed or dated his works, the chronology of these variants (and their multiple versions) is problematic. Almost none of Sassoferrato’s small devotional pictures can be traced to their original owners.

In our variant, the Virgin has chestnut hair, wears a while chemisette and head-dress, a red dress and a blue mantle, and leans her head against her left shoulder. The light and chromatic harmonies of our version are those associated with the autograph works of Sassoferrato. We are grateful to Professor François Macé de Lépinay for his endorsement of the attribution to Sassoferrato on the basi

Italian painter (1609–1685)

Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (August 25, 1609 – August 8, 1685), also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi, was an Italian Baroque painter, known for his archaizing commitment to Raphael's style. He is often referred to only by the town of his birthplace (Sassoferrato), as was customary in his time, and for example seen with da Vinci and Caravaggio.

Biography

The details of Giovanni Battista Salvi's biography are very sparse. He was born in the small town of Sassoferrato in the Marche region of central Italy, half-way between Rome and Florence, east of the Apennines.

Sassoferrato was apprenticed under his father, the painter Tarquinio Salvi; fragments of Tarquinio's work are still visible in the church of Saint Francis in Sassoferrato. The rest of Giovanni's training is undocumented but it is thought that he worked under the Bolognese Domenichino, a main apprentice of Annibale Carracci (c. 1580). Two other Carracci trainees Francesco Albani and Guido Reni also influenced Sassoferrato. In Francis Russell's view, Reni was as much Sassoferrato's mentor as Domenichino was his master. His paintings also show the influence of Albrecht Dürer, Guercino, and above all Raphael. He appears to also have been influenced by Pierre Mignard, whom he may have met in Rome in the 1630s.

Few public commissions by Sassoferrato exist, and, like Carlo Dolci he seems to have concentrated on producing multiple copies of various styles of devotional image for private patrons, a demand fuelled by the Counter-Reformation of the Catholic Church. Apart from his many smaller works, his paintings include some at the Benedictine convent of San Pietro in Perugia (1630) and the imposing altarpiece in Santa Sabina, Rome, portraying La Madonna del Rosario (1643). In 1683 Cardinal Chigi presented Sassoferrato's self-portrait to Cosimo III de' Medici.

Sas

Wikimedia disambiguation page

Not to be confused with San Giovanni Battista.

Giovanni Battista was a common Italian given name (see Battista for those with the surname) in the 16th-18th centuries. It refers to "John the Baptist" in English, the French equivalent is "Jean-Baptiste". Common nicknames include Giambattista, Gianbattista, Giovambattista, or Giambo. In Genoese the nickname was Baciccio, and a common shortening was Giovan Battista, Giobatta or simply G.B.. The people listed below are Italian unless noted otherwise.

• Giovanni Battista Adriani (c.1511–1579), historian.
• Giovanni Battista Agnello (fl. 1560–1577), author and alchemist.
• Giovanni Battista Aleotti (1546–1636), architect.
• Giovanni Battista Amendola (1848–1887), sculptor.
• Giovanni Battista Amici (1786–1863), astronomer and microscopist.
• Giovanni Battista Angioletti (1896-1961), writer and journalist.
• Giovanni Battista Ballanti (1762–1835), sculptor.
• Giovanni Battista Barbiani (1593–1650), painter.
• Giovanni Battista Beccaria (1716–1781), physicist.
• Giovanni Battista Bellandi, sculptor.
• Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823), explorer.
• Giovanni Battista Bernero (1736–1796), sculptor.
• Giovanni Battista Brocchi (1772–1826), mineralogist and geologist.
• Giovanni Battista Bugatti (1780–1869), executioner.
• Giovanni Battista Buonamente (c.1595–1642), composer and violinist.
• Giovanni Battista Caccini, sculptor.
• Giovanni Battista Caporali (1476–1560), painter.
• Giovanni Battista Caprara (1733–1810), statesman and cardinal.
• Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (1578–1635), artist.
• Giovanni Battista Casanova, painter, brother of Giacomo Casanova.
• Giovanni Battista Castello, painter.
• Giovanni Battista Casti (1724–1803), poet and librettist.
• Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (1820–1897), writer and art critic.
• Giovanni Battista Cibo, birth name of Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492).
• Giovanni Battista Cima (c.1459–c.1517), painter.
• Giovanni Battista Cimaroli (1653–1714), painte