Christ on the Road to Calvary

Vignon was born into a prosperous family in Tours, received his early training in Paris and eventually traveled to Rome, where he joined Simon Vouet, Valentin de Boulogne and the French community of painters. Active in early seventeenth century Rome, Vignon and his compatriots painted portraits, genre scenes and religious works in the severe, Caravaggesque idiom. However, Vignon's interest in Caravaggio proved to be a sporadic one, and by the 1620s the influence of Venetian coloring and Jacques Bellange's northern Mannerist conventions was evident. The color and composition of Christ on the Road to Calvary, considered an early work from the 1620s, reveals the impact of Mannerism's 'stylized' style, a movement than dominated the previous century throughout Europe.

Paola Pacht Bassani has seen the present work and believes it to be an autograph work by Vignon.