Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

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Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi) (August 25, 1609 - August 8, 1685) was an Italian Baroque painter. 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.

[edit] Biography

The details of Giovanni Battista Salvi's biography are very sparse:

1609 - Born in the small town of Sassoferrato in the Marches region of central Italy, half-way between Rome and Florence, west of Appenines.
1630 - Paints at the Benedictine convent of San Pietro in Perugia.
1643 - Completes Santa Sabina altarpiece portraying La Madonna del Rosario.
1648 - Marries in Rome and lives in San Salvatore ai Monti.
1649 - Son Francisco is baptised in Rome.
1683 - Cardinal Chigi presents Sassoferrato’s self-portrait to Cosimo III^[1].
1685- Sassoferrato dies. His will is dated June 29 of that year.

Sassoferrato 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 education is undocumented though 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 influence Sassoferrato. In Francis Russell's view, Reni was as much Sassoferrato's mentor as Domenichino was his master ^[2]. 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 Sassoferrato may have met in Rome in the 1630s.

Few public commissions by Sassoferato exist, and he seems to have spent the prime of his productive life producing multiple copies of various styles of devotional image for private patrons, a demand fuelled by the counter-reformational drive of the Catholic Church. Sassoferrato's work was held in high regard through to the mid-nineteenth century. His paintings were sometimes believed to be contemporary with the School of Raphael. However, by the late 19th century, reaction against sweet devotional art work reinforced in England by the critical commentary of John Ruskin.

The late 20th century saw a revival of interest in Italian Baroque archaizing painting with the redoubtable Guido Reni's strength of reputation leading the way generating a surge of auction interest also in Sassoferrato.

There are over three hundred works by Sassoferrato in public exhibition spaces in 2006 throughout the world including almost all of his extant drawings in the Royal collection at Windsor Castle in England.

Sassoferrato's most imposing work in situ is the altarpiece The Madonna of the Rosary in the Basilica of Santa Sabina all'Aventino, ironically a replacement for a supposed Raphael.

[edit] References

^ Now in Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
^ Page 699 in Russell, F.(1977). Sassoferrato and his Sources: a Study of Seicento Allegiance. The Burlington Magazine, CXIX pp 694-700.