Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
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.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).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).However, by the late 19th century, reaction against sweet devotional art work was reinforced in England by the critical commentary of John Ruskin.
UffiziBaroqueRaphaelSassoferratoda VinciCaravaggioMarcheFlorenceApenninesVirgin Mary in PrayerNational GalleryDomenichinoAnnibale CarracciFrancesco AlbaniGuido ReniAlbrecht DürerGuercinoPierre MignardCarlo DolciCounter-ReformationSan PietroPerugiaSanta SabinaCosimo III de' MediciJohn RuskinRoyal CollectionWindsor CastleMuseo Poldi PezzoliRijksmuseumNational Gallery of VictoriaGalleria Nazionale d'Arte AnticaThe Wallace Collection