page_title: Coronation of Saint Rosalia
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Coronation of Saint Rosalia / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Madonna e Bambino con santa Rosalia
context_page_description: The Coronation of Saint Rosalia or Madonna and Child with Saints Rosalia, Peter and Paul is a 1629 oil on canvas painting by Anthony van Dyck.
  It and the compositionally-similar The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph were both produced for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Celibates in Antwerp's Jesuit church, Saint Ignatius. They remained there until 1776, when archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria acquired them, taking them to Vienna, where they both now hang in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
context_section_description: In both Coronation and his 1624-1625 paintings of the saint, van Dyck drew heavily on prints after works by Sicilian artists, though mainly for themes and details rather than style or composition. It shows the Madonna and Child flanked by saint Paul and saint Peter, with their usual attributes of a sword and keys. The Christ Child crowns Saint Rosalia, who kneels before them, reproducing the composition of an engraving in Cascini's Vitae Sanctae Rosaliae. That engraving derived from a lost 1494 painting by Tommaso De Vigilia once in Santa Rosalia church in Bivona in western Sicily.
  Rosalia's rich brocaded mantle is unprecedented in earlier Flemish art showing the saint, which had usually shown her alone in a poor Franciscan-type habit. This detail is probably also drawn from a print but may also show the influence of the earlier c.1506 oil on panel painting by Riccardo Quartararo, showing Rosalia in royal clothing adorning the enthroned Madonna and Child.
  However, Sicilian works did not influence the composition or style of Coronation, which instead show the Venetian influence van Dyck had picked up during his time in Italy, a decisive influence on the formation of his style. The brightly-lit colours and the diagonal formed by the Madonna, Child and Saint Rosalia are very similar to Paolo Veronese's 1575 Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, clearly van Dyck's main model for Coronation.  The skull, lily and roses are all typical attributes of Saint Rosalia, with the last two not only shown woven into the crown but also carried in the basket of the figure at the extreme right of the painting (probably quoting Titian's c.1550 Prado Salome) and held by the cherubs in the top right-hand corner.
caption: Riccardo Quartararo, Saint Rosalia Adoring the Madonna and Child, circa 1506, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo
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