diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 94f6bdbf..7528d78b 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ What's new in psycopg 2.7.4
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 - Fixed Solaris 10 support (:ticket:`#532`).
+- `cursor.mogrify()` can be called on closed cursors (:ticket:`#579`).
 - Fixed `~psycopg2.extras.MinTimeLoggingCursor` on Python 3 (:ticket:`#609`).
 - Fixed parsing of array of points as floats (:ticket:`#613`).
 - Fixed `~psycopg2.__libpq_version__` building with libpq >= 10.1
diff --git a/psycopg/cursor_type.c b/psycopg/cursor_type.c
index a70e9d34..b7fd1870 100644
--- a/psycopg/cursor_type.c
+++ b/psycopg/cursor_type.c
@@ -592,8 +592,6 @@ psyco_curs_mogrify(cursorObject *self, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwargs)
         return NULL;
     }
 
-    EXC_IF_CURS_CLOSED(self);
-
     return _psyco_curs_mogrify(self, operation, vars);
 }
 
diff --git a/tests/test_cursor.py b/tests/test_cursor.py
index 580cf9b1..7a98e26d 100755
--- a/tests/test_cursor.py
+++ b/tests/test_cursor.py
@@ -121,6 +121,12 @@ class CursorTests(ConnectingTestCase):
         nref2 = sys.getrefcount(foo)
         self.assertEqual(nref1, nref2)
 
+    def test_modify_closed(self):
+        cur = self.conn.cursor()
+        cur.close()
+        sql = cur.mogrify("select %s", (10,))
+        self.assertEqual(sql, b"select 10")
+
     def test_bad_placeholder(self):
         cur = self.conn.cursor()
         self.assertRaises(psycopg2.ProgrammingError,