Lot 21: Sebastiano Ceccarini (Fano, Pesaro 1703-1783)

The Madonna and Child
oil on canvas, framed as an oval
25 x 19 1/2 in. (63.5 x 49.6 cm.)
in an 18th Century English carved and gilded frame

Major Rook, Stragglethorpe Hall, Stragglethorpe, Lincolnshire, and by descent since the mid to late 19th Century.

We are grateful to Professor Giancarlo Sestieri for proposing the attribution on the basis of photographs, noting strong analogies with the Madonna in Glory with Saints in the church of Sant'Antonio Abate in Fano (cf. B. Cleri, Sebastiano Ceccarini, Fano, 1992, pp. 76-8, no. 13, illustrated). Born in Fano, like other illustrious Marchigian artists, not least of all Carlo Maratti, Sebastiano Ceccarini went to Rome around 1724 to be trained in the workshop of his successful compatriot Francesco Mancini, with whom he later collaborated and whose academic approach he surpassed to achieve a more delicate and truthful naturalism. He became head of the Accademia di San Luca in 1750.

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