Sacra Conversazione with Saint John the Baptist, Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Roch

This composition was treated several times by Polidoro da Lanciano throughout his career. Given the influences drawn from Titian, it is likely that the artist developed the composition as a young artist, perhaps in a lost painting dating to the 1520s, and returned to it later, adapting the earlier figure types to a more mature style (V. Mancini, Polidoro da Lanciano, Lanciano, 2001, p. 145, under no. 50). The artist’s quotations from Titian include the figure of Saint Roch (see The Virgin and Child between Saints Anthony of Padua and Roch; Madrid, Museo del Prado), and the poses of the Madonna and Child, which ultimately derive from the Pesaro Madonna (Venice, Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari), but the painting also betrays the impact of other Venetian artists, such as Bonifacio de’ Pitati, Il Pordenone and early Andrea Schiavone.

At least two other slightly larger versions of this composition are known; one in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, that reproduces the figural arrangements without the angel, and a second, almost identical to the present work, in Museo Galleria Rizzi, Sestri Levante.

We are grateful to Antonio Mazzotta for endorsing the attribution to Polidoro da Lanciano on the basis of photographs, and for proposing a date in the late 1530s. We also thank Peter Humfrey for independently endorsing the attribution to Polidoro da Lanciano on the basis of photographs.