About the Artwork
Giovan Battista Salvi was born in Sassoferrato, an Italian town located between Perugia and Urbino. Often referred to simply by the place of his birth, Sassoferrato took inspiration from both Perugino and his famous pupil Raphael, whose serene and graceful aesthetic imfuses this Madonna and Child. Evoking the composition of the Madonna of the Pinks by Raphael, now in the National Gallery, London, Sassoferrato has borrowed humanizing elements such as the mother’s tender, downcast glance and her graceful, protective gesture toward her child. However, rather than relying upon Raphael’s palette of yellow and pale blue, Sassoferrato has introduced polished and sophisticated colors — pinks, whites, and deep blues — that are entirely individual to his style.
Madonna and Child
mid-17th century
Sassoferrato
1609-1685
Italian
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 29 3/8 × 23 1/2 inches (74.6 × 59.7 cm) Framed: 39 1/16 × 33 1/4 × 2 5/8 inches (99.2 × 84.5 × 6.7 cm)
Paintings
European Painting
Gift of James E. Scripps
89.25
Public Domain
Markings
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Provenance
1860, possibly Haeglin (Basel, Switzerland);1872, Joseph Gillot (Birmingham, England);
May 3, 1872, sold by (Christie's, London, England) auction collection J. Gillot, lot 326;
1872, purchased by Nieuwenhuis [for £175];
private collection, possibly Mr. Jones;
James E. Scripps (Detroit, Michigan, USA);
1889-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
For more information on provenance, please visit:
Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Catalogue of the Renowned Collection of Ancient and Modern Pictures and Water-Colour Drawings of that Well-Known Patron of Art, Joseph Gillot, Esq., Deceased. Sales cat., Christie's. London, 1872, p. 57, lot 326.
Catalogue of the Scripps Collection of Old Masters. Detroit, 1889, p. 41, no. 44.
"The Scripps Old Masters." The Collector 2, no. 13 (May 1, 1891): pp. 149-152; p. 151 [as "Virgin with the Pinks"].
Scripps, James E. Handbook of the Paintings Ancient and Modern Belonging to the Detroit Museum of Art. Detroit, 1895, p. 24.
Handbook of Paintings by the Old Masters. Detroit, 1910, p. 33, no. 40.
Burroughs, C. Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture and Contemporary Arts and Crafts. Detroit, 1920, p. 40, no. 27.
Heil, W. Catalogue of Paintings in the Permanent Collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1930, cat. 201 (ill.).
Richardson, E.P., ed. Detroit Institute of Arts Catalogue of Paintings, 2nd ed. Detroit, 1944, p. 119, no. 201.
Art in Italy, 1600-1700. Exh. cat., DIA. Detroit, 1965, p. 36, no. 16 (ill.).
Fredericksen, B., and F. Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972, p. 184.
Russell, F. "Sassoferrato and his Sources: a Study in Seicento Allegiance." Burlington Magazine 119, no. 895 (October 1977): pp. 694-700; p. 696.
Raphael and America. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1983, pp. 157-158, 197, note 154, (fig. 91); p. 206, no. 79.
Giovan Battista Salvi, 'Il Sassoferrato'. Exh. cat., Chiesa San Francesco. Sassoferrato, 1990, pp. 77-78, cat. 26.
Penny, N. "Raphael's 'Madonna dei garofani' rediscovered." Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1067 (February 1992): pp. 67-81; p. 81.
Beck, J. "Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks: A Connoisseurship Challenge." Notes in the History of Art 24, no. 2 (Winter 2005): p. 58, note 4.
Bissell, R.W., A. Derstine, and D. Miller. Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts. London, 2005, pp. 8, 178-179, cat. no. 58.
Derstine, Andria. "The Detroit Institute of Arts and Italian Baroque Painting." Buying Baroque: Italian Seventeenth-Century Paintings Come to America. Edgar Peters Bowron, ed. University Park, 2017, p. 94.
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Sassoferrato, Madonna and Child, mid-17th century, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of James E. Scripps, 89.25.
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