After Sassoferrato, 17th century

Spanish school of the seventeenth century. After GIOVANNI BATISTA SALVI "SASSOFERRATO" (Sassoferrato, 1609 - Rome, 1685).
"Mater Dolorosa".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents faults and restorations.
Frame ca. 1850.
Measurements: 47 x 35 cm; 61 x 49 cm (frame).

Bust of Mary cut out and highlighted on a very dark background thanks to a powerful spotlight that falls on her face and on her mantle, following the Baroque line known as caravaggista. However, the features of the Virgin, the modeling of the magnificent mantle, are more reminiscent of examples of the Bolognese school, noted for its classicism and its differences compared to the more tenebrist school of the pictorial baroque of 17th century Italy.
The piece follows the iconographic mode established by the artist Giovanni Battista Salvi, better known as "Il Sassoferrato", who was an Italian Baroque painter appreciated, above all, for the creation of devotional images in which he united the Bolognese classicist current and the tenebrism of the Caravaggist tradition, with a great variety of models and much diffusion, which often makes it difficult to be able to attribute works to him with certainty.