Carlo Saraceni (venice, 1579-1620)

Carlo Saraceni (Venice, 1579-1620)
1608-10 ca.
Woodland Landscape with Saint Roch
Oil on panel, 20.5 x 22.3 cm
Within an 18th-century lacquered wood frame

The painting is a variant of the Saint Roch preserved in the Capodimonte Museum (174 x 119 cm), of which a second, almost identical, autograph version is known today, held in the Koelliker collection in Milan (165 x 128 cm). A small, autographed copperplate, similar in size and composition to our copy, was held in a private collection in Gothenburg in 1976 (Copper, 17 x 21 cm). The painting under consideration, like its copperplate replica, differs from the canvases in Naples and Milan in its much smaller format and the choice to include a larger portion of landscape, which here becomes the true focus of the representation despite the religious subject. The painting depicts the scene in which Saint Roch is immersed in the forest of Piacenza and is fed by a dog that offers him bread, while an angel soon comes to his aid to heal his wounds. The work dates back to around 1608-1610, a period characterized by a pictorial language that draws inspiration from Carracci's landscape painting on the one hand and Elsheimer's dreamlike influences on the other, from his early works, such as the six copper paintings in Naples (Capodimonte).

Reference literature:
Anna Ottani Cavina, On the theme of landscape. I: Additions to Saraceni, in "The Burlington Magazine", 118, 1976, p.84, fig.36.
Chiara Marin, Carlo Saraceni (Tesi di dottorato, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, 2012-2013), p.264, cat.33.
Roberta Battaglia, Carlo Saraceni. Un veneziano tra Roma e l’Europa, De Luca, 2014, pp.240-241.