Rare Italian Wooden Reliquary Figure of St. Rocco (Roch)

The new saint Roch was, according to his late Quattrocento biographers, an aristocratic French (or, in one variant, English) pilgrim who healed plague victims in Italy and was himself stricken with the disease at Piacenza. Patiently enduring his torments in the "wilderness" outside town, he was miraculously sustained by daily delivery of a loaf of bread by a dog, in the manner of the desert fathers, and finally cured by divine fiat. Resuming his travels, he was imprisoned as a spy in a town where his own uncle was governor, served as a model prisoner, and on his deathbed was rewarded with the power to preserve petitioners from the plague. His intercessory prerogatives were proclaimed via a miraculously inscribed tablet found beside his body, promising that all who invoked his name would be cured.

By the early sixteenth century, the fortunes of the Venetian confraternity of St. Roch were on the rise, propelled by possession of the body of their patron, which drew large crowds of locals and pilgrims, many inspired to offer generous donations.' Rapidly burgeoning wealth allowed for lavish display, and Sanudo was suitably impressed, observing of the 1515 procession: "This confraternity did itself great honour, and its guardian ... deserves great praise."* Although the tableau of St. Roch and the angel was the simplest of the four presented that day, which included Old Testament prophets and Christ's descent into limbo, the arrangement was nonetheless striking. In the Scuolas staging, the cult image was brought to life, the saint's action of showing his

17th century, the saint carved with a dog at his side, his robes with remnants of red, blue and gilt decoration, presented on a 19th-century fluted column-form pedestal.