This tondo shows Mary with a book in her left hand and the infant John the Baptist holding a cross and kissing a foot of the Child. There is an etching of the scene with the addition of St Joseph in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe in Rome signed “Joan. August., Ratti inv. et f.”¹ The invention of the subject can therefore be attributed to the artist, who drew inspiration from works by Guido Reni and Carlo Maratta. With regard to the engraving, which should probably be brought forward to the 1720s, the depiction on maiolica is produced in counterpart and with a number of variants: the omission of the figure of St Joseph, the Virgin holding an open book rather than the hem of her cloak, the inclusion of a large vase of flowers and the rich decoration sculpted on the piece of furniture in the foreground. After serving an apprenticeship with Benedetto Luti in Rome, where he learned the technique of engraving as well as painting, Ratti returned to Savona in 1720 and produced both canvases and frescoes in the city and province as well as Genoa and Casale Monferrato. He also painted on maiolica, as attested by some surviving works (epergnes and plaques) dated between 1720 and 1752:² a stand dedicated to Luti, with Venus at her Toilet, 1720 (Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum); a second with The Rape of Europa, 1721 (Savona, Museo della Ceramica); a third, in blue monochrome, with a scene taken from a pulcinellata by Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1721 (Turin, Palazzo Madama); two tondi with the evangelists Mark and Luke, 1728 (Turin, Palazzo Madama); an oval plaque, in blue monochrome, reproducing La Belle Jardinière by Raphael, 1751 (London, British Museum, with which we can associate a second version at the Musei Civici in Genoa and a Small Holy Family, unsigned, but also of Raphaelesque inspiration). There is also information about another two signed and dated plaques (1724 and 1752), which were exhibited at the antiques art exhibition in Genoa in 1892 and whose whereabouts is unknown today. 

Cristina Maritano 

¹ Buscaglia 2004, p. 204, cat. I 19. 

² Ibid., pp. 236-242; R. Collu 2011, “Modelli iconografici da stampe nella ceramica ligure: l’esperienza di Gio Agostino Ratti”, in Chilosi 2011, pp. 182- 187; C. Chilosi, “Note su Bartolomeo Guidobono e Gio Agostino Ratti innovatori nella maiolica ligure”, in Anversa, Maritano 2020, pp. 174-184.