Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato, and workshop

Art market, United Kingdom, by 2024;

Where acquired by the present owner.

This recently rediscovered work is the only known replica by Sassoferrato and his workshop to have been fully brought to completion of the celebrated altarpiece of 1643 depicting Our Lady of the Rosary with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine in the Museo Domenicano di Santa Sabina all'Aventino, Rome.¹ Another painted version, left unfinished and painted on a squared canvas of similar dimensions, is in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino.² Preparatory drawings for the composition as a whole and for the figure of Saint Dominic are respectively in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.³

As pointed out by François Macé de Lépinay, this composition owes much to the works of Sassoferrato’s Marchigian forbears such as Ercole Ramazzani and Simone de Magistris, whose figural arrangements are comparable to those in this painting.⁴

¹ Oil on canvas; previously 220 x 115 cm. and now reduced to its original dimensions of 170 x 110 cm.; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Sassoferrato%2C_madonna_del_rosario%2C_1643%2C_01.jpg

² Inv. no. 1990 D 286; oil on canvas; 167 x 95 cm.; https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/1100369002

³ F.M. de Lépinay, in Sassoferrato: Devout Beauty, F.M. de Lepinay (ed.), exh. cat., Sassoferrato 2019, p. 244–46, under no. 57.

⁴ See for example: Ercole Ramazzani, Our Lady of the Rosary, Chiesa Parrocchiale di Sant' Anna , Montebello di Orciano, dated 1589; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Ercole_Ramazzani%2C_Madonna_del_Rosario%2C_1589%2C_Montebello_di_Orciano%2C_chiesa_parrocchiale_di_san_Giovanni_Battista_dedicata_a_Sant%27Anna.jpg; and Simone de Magistris, Our Lady of the Rosary, Chiesa di San Francesco, Montefortino, dated 1577; https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/1100116253