Munich (epd). For around ten weeks, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich is showing a long-lost drawing of a Madonna and Child by Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Il Sassoferrato (1609-1685). The drawing was stolen from the collection around 50 years ago and reappeared in the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in the state of Maryland in 2021, the Pinakothek in Munich announced on Wednesday. The American museum had taken over a private collection at the time.
Sassoferrato’s sheets are rare in the cabinets of the world. Most of the approximately 90 known sheets are kept by the British Royal Collection, London, according to the statement. In 2017, the first large-scale exhibition on the work of the increasingly famous baroque artist took place in Sassoferrato’s birthplace near Ancona. For the accompanying exhibition catalog and an essay on Sassoferrato’s drawings, the Graphic Art Collection provided the curator with a scan of the photograph of the stolen sheet. The curator in Maryland then used this catalog to identify the Madonna, it said. The drawing, believed lost, returned to Munich on October 28, 2022. It belongs to one of the oldest holdings in the Munich collection, the collection of Stephan and Georg von Stengel from the late 18th century.
From Thursday, December 15 to Sunday, February 5, 2023, the drawing will be on display in the rotunda area of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the museum said. .