The unexpected gift has a place of honor: the delicate leaf sits enthroned in front of the purple wall paint like a precious relic in an illuminated display case. The rare Madonna drawing by the Baroque painter Sassoferrato is indeed unique and valuable. And for the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne also something of a miracle. Because the “Madonna and Child” was considered lost for more than 50 years.
A visitor noticed the loss in August 1965 in the study room of the State Graphic Collection in Munich. An unknown thief tore the small sheet from its protective box and took it with him. Prosecutors searched for the thief for a few months, but then dropped the investigation.
For decades, the museum was left with only an index card, a black-and-white photo and an entry in the inventory of the drawing “Madonna and Child”. Until last year, a clever curator at an American museum in the US state of Maryland made a discovery: in the catalog of one Sassoferrato2017 exhibit, Daniel Fulco discovered the missing drawing that a private collector recently donated to the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts.
He was only sure when he recognized a sketch of a hand study that had been preserved to the right above the Madonna on the Munich sheet – the thief had tried to erase it, so that the drawing on the black market was not so easy to recognize. The US Museum informed the State Graphic Collection in Munich about the discovery, and so the rare baroque work was returned to Munich.
The curator of the State Graphic Collection in Munich, Kurt Zeitler, is overjoyed. “Sassoferrato’s drawings are few and far between in the cabinets of the world.” Even famous collections such as the Albertina in Vienna or the Metropolitan Museum in New York, like those in Munich, each only have one drawing by the master.
The porcelain-like paintings of the Madonna by Giovanni Battista Salvi, called “Il Sassoferrato” (1609 to 1985), have only experienced a boom in recent years. Sassoferrato oriented himself on models of the Renaissance. The “Madonna and Child” drawing is based on Raphael’s “Madonna Macintosh”, which now hangs in the National Gallery in London.
Some of Sassoferrato’s paintings are now fetching six-figure sums at auction. Sassoferrato, artist Salvi’s home town near Ancona, hosted a retrospective on him in 2017. Now the mother and child, drawn delicately with black chalk on blue-grey paper and in good condition, are finally back in Munich.
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