This Madonna at prayer derives from Sassoferrato’s full-length Assumption of the Virgin in the Musée Massey, Tarbes. That composition was in turn inspired by works of the same subject by Guido Reni, notably the pictures in the Musée des beaux-arts, Lyon, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Madonna at prayer is arguably the subject most readily associated with Sassoferrato's oeuvre and the existence of further bust-length renditions, preserved in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, and the Accademia Albertina, Turin, attest to the success of the present composition. Although his development was much influenced by both Annibale Carracci and Francesco Albani, it was the classicism of Guido Reni that drew the strongest response, and it is even possible that Sassoferrato studied with the Bolognese master when he returned to Rome in 1628.

Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar (1797-1864), a former owner of the picture, was a Scottish landowner, amateur artist and one of the most important patrons of J.M.W. Turner. He formed a celebrated collection of pictures that included Rembrandt’s Lucretia (Washington, National Gallery of Art), Veronese’s Vision of St. Helena (London, National Gallery) and Titian’s Rest on the Flight (Longleat).