Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
painter. He is often referred to only by the town of his birthplace (Sassoferrato
Sassoferrato
Sassoferrato is a town and comune of the province of Ancona in the Marche region of Italy.-History:To the south of the town lie the ruins of the ancient Sentinum, on the Via Flaminia...
), as was customary in his time, and for example seen with da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
and Caravaggio.
Biography
The details of Giovanni Battista Salvi's biography are very sparse. He was born in the small town of Sassoferrato in the MarcheMarche
The population density in the region is below the national average. In 2008, it was 161.5 inhabitants per km2, compared to the national figure of 198.8. It is highest in the province of Ancona , and lowest in the province of Macerata...
region of central Italy, half-way between Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
and Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, west of Apennines.
Sassoferrato was 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 training is undocumented but it is thought that he worked under the Bolognese Domenichino
Domenico Zampieri
Domenico Zampieri was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School, or Carracci School, of painters.-Life:...
, a main apprentice of Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early career:Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood first apprenticed within his family...
(c. 1580). Two other Carracci trainees Francesco Albani
Francesco Albani
Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early years in Bologna:Born 1578 in Bologna, his father was a silk merchant who intended to instruct his son in the same trade; but by age twelve, Albani became an apprentice under the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, where he...
and Guido Reni
Guido Reni
Guido Reni was an Italian painter of high-Baroque style.-Biography:Born in Bologna into a family of musicians, Guido Reni was the son of Daniele Reni and Ginevra de’ Pozzi. As a child of nine, he was apprenticed under the Bolognese studio of Denis Calvaert. Soon after, he was joined in that...
also influenced Sassoferrato. In Francis Russell's view, Reni was as much Sassoferrato's mentor as Domenichino was his master. His paintings also show the influence of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
, Guercino, and above all Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
. He appears to also have been influenced by Pierre Mignard
Pierre Mignard
Pierre Mignard , called "Le Romain" to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas Mignard, was a French painter...
, whom he may have met in Rome in the 1630s.
Few public commissions by Sassoferrato exist, and, like Carlo Dolci
Carlo Dolci
Carlo Dolci was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Florence, known for highly finished religious pictures, often repeated in many versions.-Biography:...
he seems to have concentrated on producing multiple copies of various styles of devotional image for private patrons, a demand fuelled by the counter-reformational drive
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
of the Catholic Church. Apart from his many smaller works, his paintings include some at the Benedictine convent of San Pietro
San Pietro, Perugia
San Pietro is the name of a church and an abbey in the city of Perugia , central Italy.-History:The monastery was created around 996 over the former cathedral church, the early seat of Perugia's bishops, existing since the early seventh century, although the first document citing the abbot is from...
in Perugia
Perugia
Perugia is the capital city of the region of Umbria in central Italy, near the River Tiber, and the capital of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome. It covers a high hilltop and part of the valleys around the area....
(1630) and the imposing altarpiece in Santa Sabina
Santa Sabina
The Basilica of Saint Sabina at the Aventine is a titular minor basilica and mother church of the Roman Catholic Dominican order in Rome, Italy. Santa Sabina lies high on the Aventine Hill, beside the Tiber, close to the headquarters of theKnights of Malta....
, Rome, portraying La Madonna del Rosario (1643). In 1683 Cardinal Chigi presented Sassoferrato’s self-portrait to Cosimo III de' Medici.
Sassoferrato died in 1685. His will is dated June 29 of the same year.
Works
Sassoferrato's work was held in high regard through to the mid-19th 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 was reinforced in England by the critical commentary of John RuskinJohn Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
.
The late 20th century saw a revival of interest in Italian Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
archaizing painting with Guido Reni leading the way in generating a surge of auction interest also in Sassoferrato.
There are over three hundred works by Sassoferrato in public collections in 2006 throughout the world including almost all of his extant drawings in the British Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
at Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
.