page_title: Saint Roch
section_title: Saint Roch in art
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Roch / Saint Roch in art
caption_attribution_description: Español: La obra representa a San Roque, y fue adquirida en 1990 por la Generalitat Valenciana.
context_page_description: Saint Roch or Rocco was a Catholic saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August and 9 September in Italy; he is specially invoked against the plague. He may also be called Rock in English, and has the designation of St Rollox in Glasgow, Scotland, said to be a corruption of St Roch's Loch, which referred to a small loch once near a chapel dedicated to St. Roch in 1506.
  He is a patron saint of dogs, invalids, of falsely accused people, bachelors, and several other things. He is the patron saint of Dolo (near Venice) and Parma.
  He is also the patron of Casamassima, Cisterna di Latina and Palagiano, Italy.
  Saint Roch is known as "São Roque" in Portuguese, as "Sant Roc" in Catalan, and as "San Roque" in Spanish (former Spanish colonies such as the Philippines) and in Serbia there is a church Sveti Roka in Petrovaradinu named after him.
  Sveti Roka u Petrovaradinu
context_section_description: Following the Black Death, especially the Italian plague epidemic of 1477–79, new images of Christian martyrs and saints appeared and Saint Roch gained new fame and popularity. The religious art of the time emphasized the importance of the saint to plague-ridden Christians.
  The new plague-related images of Saint Roch were drawn from a variety of sources. Plague texts dating from ancient and classical times, as well as Christian, scientific and folk beliefs, all contributed to this emerging visual tradition.  Some of the most popular symbols of plague were swords, darts, and most especially arrows.  There was also a prevalence of memento mori themes, dark clouds, and astrological signs (signa magna) such as comets, which were often referenced by physicians and writers of plague tracts as causes of plague. The physical symptoms of plague – a raised arm, a tilted head, or a collapsed body – began to symbolize plague in post-Black Death painting.
  Plague saints offered hope and healing before, during, and after times of plague.  A specific style of painting, the plague votive, was considered a talisman for warding off plague. It portrayed a particular saint as an intercessor between God and the person or persons who commissioned the painting – usually a town, government, lay confraternity, or religious order to atone for the "collective guilt" of the community.
  These plague votives worked as a psychological defense against disease in which people attempted to manipulate their situation through requesting the intercession of a saint against the arrows of plague.  Rather than a society depressed and resigned to repeated epidemics, these votives represent people taking positive steps to regain control over their environment. Paintings of St. Roch represent the confidence in which renaissance worshipers sought to access supernatural aid in overcoming the ravages of plague.
  The very abundance of means by which people invoked the aid of the celestial court is essential in understanding Renaissance responses to the disease.  Rather than depression or resignation, people "possessed a confidence that put even an apocalyptic disaster of the magnitude of the Black Death into perspective of God's secure and benevolent plan for humankind."
  The plague votives functioned both to request intercessory aid from plague saints and to provide catharsis for a population that had just witnessed the profound bodily destruction of the plague. By showing plague saints such as St. Roch and St. Sebastian, votives influenced the distribution of God's mercy by invoking the memory of the human suffering experienced by Christ during the Passion. In the art of St. Roch after 1477 the saint displayed the wounds of his martyrdom without evidence of pain or suffering. Roch actively lifted his clothing to display the plague bubo in his thigh. This display of his plague bubo showed that "he welcomed his disease as a divinely sent opportunity to imitate the sufferings of Christ… [his] patient endurance [of the physical suffering of plague was] a form of martyrdom."
  Roch's status as a pilgrim who suffered plague is paramount in his iconography. "The sight of Roch scarred by the plague yet alive and healthy must have been an emotionally-charged image of a promised cure. Here was literal proof that one could survive the plague, a saint who had triumphed over the disease in his own flesh."
caption: Saint Roch, by Francesco Ribalta, c. 1625, Museo de Bellas Artes, Valencia.
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