Lot 2071 Dα

Elisabetta Sirani lists the Madonna at prayer among the works she created in 1662: "Una B. V. figurata dopo la morte del Figlio in atto tutto mesto, e involta in un panno morello, mezza figura dal naturale, per Monsig. Giorigi Vicelegato" (a blessed virgin, depicted after the death of her son, all in mourning, and wrapped in a blackish cloth, half figure after life, for Monsig. Giorigi Vicelegato). The records of the famous Bolognese artist have come down to us through C. C. Malvasia's Bolognese Artists' Vitae of 1678. It is to the credit of Donatella Biagi Maino that this hitherto unknown painting has been identified among Sirani's many depictions of the Virgin. The signature prominently displayed on the hem of the sleeve, with the date 166(2), which is no longer fully legible, testifies to the importance of the commission.



As a girl, Elisabetta Sirani was not allowed to attend an academy or other art school to draw from the living model. However, the highly gifted artist found ample opportunity to train herself at the home of her father, the painter Giovanni Andrea Sirani, using plaster models of antique statues, drawings by important artists and books. Taught and encouraged by her father, a successor of Guido Reni, she achieved international fame. She was regarded as a natural wonder by her contemporaries, but she died at an early age. Her paintings, as this example impressively demonstrates, are characterised by a great sensitivity. Donatella Biagi Maino writes in her expertise: "What makes this Mother Mary so wonderfully approachable is the subdued, almost resigned tone that Elisabetta imprinted on the Madonna's pain, an image of gentle surrender to fate in the awareness of an imminent resurrection".