ŚLĄSKIE STUDIA HISTORYCZNO-TEOLOGICZNE

Piacenza (Italy) – The Greatest Pictorial Cycle Dedicated to Saint Hyacinth
The first images of Saint Hyacinth Odrowąż appeared long before his canonisation (1594). However, it was this very event which generated such a great increase in his popularity. It is difficult today to present a complete catalogue of all the works dedicated to him. Sometimes they were not just single paintings but whole pictorial cycles. The greatest of these, which is comprised of thirteen paintings (on canvas) and one fresco, is found in Piacenza, Italy and was completed between the 16th and 17th centuries. Until the 1940s the cycle was found in the Chapel of Saint Hyacinth in the Church of San Giovanni in Canale. Today it is kept in the parochial archive and is inaccessible to the public. The creators of the cycle are a group of painters who represent the artistic milieu of Cremona, Veneto and Lombardy. At the head of this group was a great artist Giovanni Battista Trotti (Il Malosso). From an artistic point of view the paintings in Piacenza representing the last and most refined fruit of late mannerism in the Po Valley are among the most important pictorial cycles completed in the 16th and 17th centuries.