Oil on panel, datable to the early 19th century.
The small painting is based, with some variations, on the "Madonna of the Rest," the large altarpiece (240x158 cm) created by Benvenuto Tisi, known as Garofalo, around 1525 and preserved at the Pinacoteca Civica in Ferrara, of which numerous copies from different eras are known (Bibl.: Fioravanti Baraldi, Il Grarofalo - Catalogo Generale, Luisè Editore 1998, pp. 175-178).
The author is probably the Ferrarese restorer and painter Gregorio Boari (1795-1865); who, after training in Rome according to the canons of academic classicism, refining his technique also thanks to copies of ancient masters, returned to his native Ferrara, establishing himself with a figurative production linked to the five-sixteenth-century tradition, creating altarpieces and copies of important ancient works.
To create this small work, the painter used a 16th-century wooden tablet as a support, with the philological intention of creating a painting that was also materially "ancient".
The painting measures 27 x 33 cm and is inserted in a 17th-century frame lacquered in black and dark red, with an inner profile highlighted in gold (total size 46.5 x 52 cm).
