Madonna of the Snow

This small painting is kept in the chapel and reliquary of the same name, beyond the south transept of the cathedral, and is highly likely to have come from a religious building in Cervia Vecchia where worship of Madonna of the Snow was particularly fervent through the salt pan community (Viroli, 1991).

Although in the past this work was said to have been painted by Barbara Longhi (Foschi, 1977; Gasperoni - Maroni, 1986), today it appears to be widely accepted to be the work of an itinerant painter in the Ravenna area named Bernardo Guarini, who was active at the end of the 1500s and the start of the 1600s (Viroli, 1991; Gori, 2001).

Although it is very different in terms of quality, this tender depiction of the Virgin Mary with Child clearly owes a debt to the Raphealite style inspired in Romagna by painters operating around Bologna, such as Innocenza da Imola and Bartolomeo Ramenghi, as well as local forerunners Luca and Barbara Longhi. Maria is holding the Infant Jesus in a maternal embrace, whilst her son seems to want to wriggle free with the typical clumsy gestures of a child. 

On the right, the soft colours of the drapery stand out against the dark background where the landscape - which extends on the left - is partially concealed by a curtain which recalls some of the examples of Raphael's Roman art. Despite the fact that the execution shows traces of provincialism and the stylistic shortcomings of this artist (Pasini, 1973), the intensity of the two holy subject’s gaze towards the viewer makes the work a pleasing example of Romagna religious painting”