Giovan Maria di Bartolomeo Bacci di Belforte

Giovan Maria di Bartolomeo Bacci di Belforte was a Florentine painter known to art history chiefly by his nickname, Rocco Zoppo. French-language reference sources place his documented activity in Florence from about 1496 to 1508, working in an idiom shaped by the Perugino circle typical of the period. One secondary account describes him as having assisted in Pietro Perugino's workshop, but the documentation for that specific connection is thin and is not corroborated across multiple primary sources, so it should be read as plausible rather than established.

Exact birth and death dates are not fixed in the available scholarly record. His documented activity is recorded as ending by 1508, in Florence, but that marks the end of his known activity rather than a confirmed death date. Commercial art-image databases such as Bridgeman Images and Meisterdrucke instead list an approximate lifespan of 1450 to 1510 for the same artist. That range appears only in image-licensing catalogues rather than in a primary biographical source, and it has not been independently corroborated. No obituary, will, or parish record has been located that would fix a precise death date or place, and none should be assumed.

Surviving works attributed to him, including a Madonna and Child with Two Angels reproduced on Wikimedia Commons and a Virgin and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint Francis that later passed through the Paris auction market, place him within the devotional panel-painting tradition of late Quattrocento Florence. No catalogue raisonne of his work has been published, and no modern museum retrospective or major loan exhibition devoted to him has been identified.

No named art critic's assessment of Bacci di Belforte's work in a major outlet could be located, and no record of formal awards, honors, or a dedicated museum exhibition survives for him. This is consistent with his standing as a secondary Florentine painter of the period: he is documented in specialist archival authority files and in image-licensing catalogues, but he has not been the subject of the kind of monographic study, retrospective, or press coverage that tends to generate quotable criticism. His appearance in reference works alongside better-documented contemporaries such as Perugino reflects a workshop-era connection rather than an independent critical reputation.

The only auction result identified for Bacci di Belforte is Vierge a l'Enfant avec saint Jerome et saint Francois, catalogued by Christie's Paris and sold, without reserve, on 27 November 2013. The realized price is not disclosed in the publicly accessible auction record, so no hammer price or currency conversion can be reported here. No further auction result has been identified through 2026. With only one indexed sale and no confirmed price, any market read for this artist is necessarily provisional, and no gallery or estate currently represents him.

Bacci di Belforte is a name collectors will most likely encounter through attribution studies and Old Master specialist sales rather than through an active primary or secondary gallery market. There is no catalogue raisonne, no confirmed museum collection holding in the available record, and only one documented auction result with no disclosed price, so provenance research and connoisseurship, rather than market comparables, will carry most of the weight in any transaction. Collectors should treat the 1450 to 1510 life dates found in commercial art-image databases as approximate and unconfirmed, and should expect that further research in Italian archival sources could refine or correct the biography.