Saint Roch (Parmigianino)
Saint Roch is a tempera on canvas painting by Parmigianino, executed c. 1528, now in a private collection in Parma. It measures 27.8 by 21.5 cm. A preparatory study for the work survives in the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne (n. 699). Like the artist's Saint Roch with a Donor (1527), its elongated figures are typical of works produced during his stay in Bologna after escaping the Sack of Rome.
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Previously in the Baiardi collection, the work is probably the "canvas with a Saint Roch sketched in colour 0.7 high 0.5 high by Parmigianino" recorded in the 1560-1566 Baiardi collection inventory. Those measurements equate to about 31.7 cm by 21.6 cm - it is now smaller due to warping visible to the naked eye. It is a fragment of a larger composition, perhaps one of the two "guazzi" described in Vasari's Lives of the Artists as commissioned in Bologna from "Maestro Luca di Leuti" - the other is probably Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Museo di Capodimonte).[1]
References
- Mario Di Giampaolo ed Elisabetta Fadda, Parmigianino, Keybook, Santarcangelo di Romagna 2002. ISBN 8818-02236-9