Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (1609–1685) takes his name from his birthplace, a small town in the Marche. He was apprenticed to his father, the painter Tarquinio Salvi; the rest of his training is undocumented, though he is thought to have worked under Domenichino, and Guido Reni and Francesco Albani also shaped his style. Above all he looked to Raphael, so closely that his pictures were sometimes believed to date from Raphael's own school. The details of his life are limited. In Rome in the 1640s and 1650s he painted many portraits, largely for churchmen, and in 1643 the Virgin of the Rosary for Santa Sabina, perhaps his best-known work. For the most part, though, he produced devotional images of the Virgin for private patrons, in such demand during the Counter-Reformation that he kept a reserve stock of them. He died in Rome in 1685. Two works here: The Virgin in Prayer and Virgin & Child Embracing.