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| Sassoferrato Virgin in Prayer ca. 1640-50 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Sassoferrato Virgin in Prayer ca. 1640-50 oil on canvas National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
"Giovanni Battista Salvi was born at Sassoferrato in the Marches, from where he took his name. His work, which was consciously anachronistic in 17th-century Rome, looked back to the 15th century manner of Perugino and Raphael. Sassoferrato's paintings consist for the most part of immaculately painted devotional images of the Virgin and Holy Family, usually repeated in several versions. He was trained in Umbria by his father before moving to Rome, where he was not entirely unaffected by contemporary painters, including Domenichino and Guido Reni. In his late years Sassoferrato was again active in Umbria and in Florence, where he would have known the work of Carlo Dolci, and where he may have died."
– from curator's notes at the National Gallery, London
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| Sassoferrato God the Father supporting the Dead Christ before 1685 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato Study for kneeling Angel in Crucifixion scene before 1685 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato St Cecilia ca. 1635-50 oil on canvas Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan |
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| attributed to Sassoferrato Portrait of Girl with Muff, and Head of Youth before 1685 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato Judith with the Head of Holofernes ca. 1630-40 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato Virgin and Child with St Elizabeth and young St John the Baptist before 1685 oil on canvas Wellington Collection, Apsley House, London |
"Sassoferrato's art is proof of the fact that even in the progressive 17th century the tradition of the contemplative and meditative style of Umbrian painting of the period around 1500 was still vital and widespread. He is in fact nothing other than a late-born imitator of Perugino who knew how to combine in an agreeable manner the primitivism and the naive sentimentalism of his prototype with certain elements of his own time. He often borrows directly from the compositions of the young Raphael or of Raphael's predecessors and adherents. In other instances he simply transforms compositions or pictorial types from the Carracci school into an almost Quattrocentesque style. Not infrequently he reveals himself as an undisguised copyist of his sources; he is generally materially faithful but imperceptively alters the original in terms of his own temperament."
– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)
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| Sassoferrato Holy Family before 1685 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Sassoferrato Virgin and Child embracing ca. 1660-85 oil on canvas National Gallery, London |
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| Sassoferrato St Joseph leaning on a table ca. 1650 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Sassoferrato Study for St Joseph and Christ Child (for a painting of The Adoration of the Shepherds) before 1685 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato The Virgin unveils the sleeping Child before 1685 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Sassoferrato Self-portrait ca. 1650 oil on canvas Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |