A Plague Saint for Venice: Tintoretto at the Chiesa di San Rocco, 2012

A Plague Saint for Venice: Tintoretto at the Chiesa di San RoccoAuthor(s): Louise MarshallSource: Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 33, No. 66 (2012), pp. 153-187Published by: IRSA s.c.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23509749Accessed: 18-07-2017 02:16 UTC

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Louise Marshall

A Plague Saint for Venice: Tintoretto at the Chiesa di San

Rocco

Tintoretto's extraordinary achievement in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco has compelled the attention of all subsequent viewers. Decorated in a series of campaigns stretching over decades, covered with more than fifty canvases of outstanding drama and bravura, the magnificent rooms of the confraternity building inevitably dominate any discussion of the artist and his achievements.1 However, this article will resist their siren call in favour of the adjoining confraternity church of San Rocco [Fig. 1], where, between 1549 and the 1580s, Tintoretto paint ed four lateral canvases celebrating the patron saint's life and miracles in the main chapel.2 As recent exhibitions in Madrid and Boston have reminded us, Tintoretto was above all else a supremely inventive and prolific painter of sacred narratives, the vast majority for churches and public buildings in his native Venice.3 Religious episodes dominate his oeuvre, remaining throughout his life the principal focus of patrons' desires for commissions and the artist's chosen arena of contest with pred ecessors and contemporaries. Yet even in the wake of renewed attention to the artist's innovative reimagining of the conven tions of sacred story, the narratives in the church of San Rocco remain little studied.

In addition to the lure of the neighbouring Scuola, chron ological disjunctions, perceived variations in quality due to increased workshop involvement and later changes to the original arrangement have all played a part in deflecting schol


Louise Marshall

ALTRA VEDVTA DELLA SOVOLA DI S ROCCO con la Chiefa in proipetto

Luca CarUeuarys c/d,: et inc :

1. Luca Carlevaris, «Altra Veduta della Scuola di S. Rocco, con la chiesa in prospetto», from Le fabriche e vedute di Venezia, 1703, etching, British Museum, inv. no. 1928,1016.62. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum

arly attention. Since most discussions of Tintoretto's oeuvre in response to their original physical and devotional context, are chronologically organised and stylistically focused, works articulating the commissioning confraternity's vision of their painted so far apart are not usually discussed together, even heavenly patron and shaping worshippers' experience of the though this is how they were intended to be viewed. Moreover, powers of the saint, whose relics were a magnet for those seek Tintoretto's Roch narratives are generally presented as if existing protection against the scourge of bubonic plague, ing in a vacuum, the product of the artist's idiosyncratic tern- Investigation of the ways in which Roch's life and miracles perament. However, my researches have identified an extensive were visualised at the church where his body is preserved is corpus of earlier monumental cycles of Roch across northern particularly timely in the light of current debate regarding the Italy, which provides an essential comparative framework by origins and development of his cult. Overturning older chro which to interpret patronal and artistic choices at San Rocco. nologies, recent scholarship, most notably the searing critique The present study thus aims to reintegrate the four laterali as launched by Belgian hagiographer Pierre Bolle, has demon a coherent, planned quartet framing worshippers' approach to strated that veneration of Roch as a plague protector was a late the tomb of the saint at the high altar. Such an analysis sheds fifteenth-century novelty, documented first in central and north new light on the ways in which the paintings were designed em Italy in the 1460s and 1470s, then spreading with aston

154


A Plague Saint for Venice: Tintoretto at the Chiesa di San Rocco

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2. Bartolomeo Bon (attrib.), Scuoletta, Venice, 1489-1509

ishing speed throughout Europe in the succeeding decades.4 tive powers against the plague only revealed by miraculous For worshippers, the key to Roch's appeal was the belief that signs after his death.5 he was both healer and victim of the plague. According to his The crux of the problem surrounding Roch's cult is the fifteenth-century biographers, the new saint was a French noble- complete absence of any independent documentation of his man who gave away his goods before setting out on pilgrimage existence outside the written vite - no family records, no first to Rome. Curing plague sufferers in hospitals throughout Italy, hand accounts, no canonisation enquiry of the kind so fruitfully including a cardinal in Rome who gratefully presented him to the analysed by André Vauchez.6 Instead, Roch seems to spring pope, he was himself infected at Piacenza. There he retreated forth full grown, like Athena from Zeus' forehead, appealed to to the 'wilderness' to endure his sufferings with saintly fortitude, by cities and individuals and vigorously promoted as a plague was miraculously sustained by daily canine delivery service of a protector by a number of late fifteenth-century biographies, all loaf of bread in the manner of the desert fathers, and ultimately originating in northern Italy. The first and most influential of these cured by divine fiat. Taking up his travels again, he was arrested was composed by Venetian humanist Francesco Diedo, spurred as a spy in a city where his own uncle was governor and died by the spectacle of Brescia wracked by the plague during his neglected and alone in prison, his identity, sanctity and protec- tenure as governor.7 Cannily published in concurrent Latin and

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Louise Marshall

. Bartolomeo Bon (attrib.), San Rocco, Venice, 1489-1508.

Photo: Scuoia Grande

Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

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Italian editions In Milan in 1479, towards the end of two harrow- It was an unnatural state of affairs quickly exploited by the ing years of severe pan-European plague outbreaks, Diedo's Venetian confraternity. In 1485, only a handful of years after its vita was an Immediate bestseller, reprinted in both universalising 1479 foundation in the same plague epidemic that led Diedo to Latin and particularised vernaculars in all major European print- publish his vita, the Scuola di San Rocco triumphantly produced ing centres over the following decades and inspiring multiple Roch's body. The specific circumstances by which this coup adaptations, retellings and summaries.8 Yet Diedo's vita post- was achieved were unclear, a lacuna which the confraternity dates the earliest invocations to the saint and is distinguished later attempted to redress with the creation of a furta sacra nar by its lack of specificity and profusion of hagiographie topo/.9 rative following the celebrated civic model of the procurement of The spread of devotion to Roch, to which Diedo both attests Mark's relics.11 Venetian claim to the saint's body was thus more and strongly contributes, is also extraordinary for the absence of a function of Roch's popularity than a cause, although once any of the expected indices of a nascent cult, namely miracles deposited in the city it provided a new locus from which his and invocations generated by possession of a venerated body fame could be disseminated, particularly via German merchants in a specific locality. Instead, Diedo's vita and all those that fol- resident in Venice, as Heinrich Dormeier has demonstrated.12 lowed him are full of confusions and evasions regarding such Yet the primary engines driving the incredibly rapid diffusion of basic information as the place of Roch's death or the location Roch's worship throughout Europe in the years around 1500 of his body.10 were not localised in Venice or anywhere else, but lay rather in

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7. Right wall of cappella maggiore, San Rocco, Venice

the conjunction of the new technologies of mass communica- from Renaissance plague saint still requires interrogation and tion with the urgency of need for saintly intercessors generated explanation.15 That such uncertainties were not entirely ignored by the plague. Not without reason has Roch been dubbed the during the Renaissance is indicated by the worried comments first saint of the printing press.13 of the Venetian ambassador to Rome in 1590, not long after

For some hagiographers, most notably Bolle, the resolution the last of Tintoretto's paintings was most likely installed in San to the anomalies swirling around Roch has been to propose that Rocco, informing the Doge that he had been repeatedly urged he never existed, but was created by homonymie confusion to beg the Venetian government to "send soon the witnesses with another saint, the bishop and martyr Rochus or Rachus and public documents of the life and miracles of the blessed of Autun, venerated in the south of France on the same feast Roch, because our Lord [Pope Sixtus V] is strong in his opinion day and appealed to for protection against tempests (which either to canonize him or else to remove him from the ranks of by linguistic slippage and meteorological association is sug- the saints".16 The history of the Venetian confraternity and of gested as the source of Roch's powers against the plague).14 the narratives Tintoretto painted for its church need to be inter Yet even if this were so, the enormous distance in terms of char- preted with this peculiarly elusive saintly history in mind, acter and narrative imaginary separating Merovingian bishop The acquisition of Roch's body was the making of the Venetian

confraternity, propelling it into the ranks of the Scuole Grandi in

6. Cupola, drum and apse of cappella maggiore, San Rocco, Venice. 1489- onlV a decade after its foundation, swelling the number Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco of its members and attracting generous donations that quickly

159

6. Cupola, drum and apse of cappella maggiore, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita dl San Rocco


Louise Marshall

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8. Left wall of cappella maggiore, San Rocco, Venice

transformed its early impoverished status to one of extraordi- Although the nave and façade were demolished and nary wealth.17 Possession of an undivided sacred corpse set the rebuilt in the eighteenth century, the original façade is record Scuola di San Rocco apart from almost every other confraternity ed in prints [Fig. 1] and the new nave adhered to the original in the city, including the other four Scuole Grandi.18 To display Quattrocento dimensions and architectural vocabulary. In its the body with appropriate dignity and honour, the Scuola began architectural patronage, the Scuola di San Rocco consistently construction of the church of San Rocco in 1489.19 Work pro- sought to position itself within venerable local tradition.22 The ceeded quickly, with the east end completed within a year, allow- façade of the new church continued existing Venetian formal ing placement of the saint's body in the left apse, and the façade types in the emphatically vertical tripartite arrangement and erected by 1494; the church was consecrated in 1508 20 Tucked characteristic curving silhouette.23 Dominating its small campo, away behind the apse of the much larger Franciscan church of the church provided a clear goal for the intending visitor. Within, Santa Maria dei Frari and in an area of the city then still peripheral a single nave culminated in a raised east end (still preserved to the centres of civic power, this was nevertheless a major state- from the original building, due to the presence of the holy body ment of the confraternity's arrival in the Venetian ritual landscape.

Where other confraternities owned patronage rights over chapels 9 Titian <<st Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life>> c. 1517_1518, in neighbouring churches, the Scuola di San Rocco possessed woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. an entire church, built ex nuovo and under its sole jurisdiction.21 Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum

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9. Titian, «St Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life», c. 1517-1518, woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum



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10. Giovan Pietro da Cemmo, «Gothard Discovering Roch in the Wilderness», 1505, Cappella del Comune, Berzo Interiore (Lombardy)

at the high altar) with a main chapel capped by a dome and to present the saint to his devotees in all the glory he deserved flanked by two smaller apses. The light from the drum of the [Figs 4-5].24 As Peter Humfrey has observed, the San Rocco dome and the high, grandiose arch framing the main chapel altarpiece, designed by Venturino Fantoni with figures carved draw the visitor forward to the high altar and the relics [Fig. 3]. by Giammaria Mosca and Bartolomeo Bergamasco between

Concern to create an appropriately striking public set- 1517-1524, created a new standard of grandiose architectural ting for the holy body in direct competition with the other altarpieces that few if any other commissioners could match saintly corpses on display in Venice is evident in the Scuola's for either sumptuousness or expense - 'opera maraviglioso', sequence of interventions regarding the arrangement of the in the words of contemporary diarist Marin Sañudo. With great cappella maggiore and was frequently articulated in the accom- pomp and circumstance, the saint's body was formally trans panying debates. These moved in an increasing crescendo lated to the new tomb-altar in March 1520, the date inscribed of competitive magnificence, from an altarpiece and casket below the sarcophagus upheld by putti.25 to an extravagantly splendid polychrome marble structure Once the last of the high altar sculptures were completed in above the high altar that combined both tomb and altarpiece the mid 1520s, the confraternity turned its attention to the further

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11. Tintoretto and Paolo Fiammingo, «St Roch in the Wilderness», 1580s, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

enrichment of the main chapel. Thanks to its possession of not whose talents the Scuola had already tested in a dramatic corn one but multiple highly charismatic miracle-working objects position for the wooden doors of a cupboard for liturgical silver that drew very large crowds and attracted substantial dona- in the nave in 1527, was commissioned some months later and tions - a flowering thorn from the crown of thorns, a miracu- completed the frescoes of the apsidal walls, conch, drum and lous processional cross and, most celebrated of all, Giorgione's cupola within the year.28 Venetian damp has destroyed almost painting of Christ Carrying the Cross (c. 1510) - the Scuola was all of these except for the superbly illusionistic frescoes of putti in an enviable financial position and enjoyed high standing as holding up Roch's attributes as sacred trophies at either side of a destination for pilgrims and locals alike.26 As a document of the altar, but the ensemble was greatly admired by contempo March 1528 indicates, four large paintings on the side walls raries and later viewers. As a result, the iconographie scheme narrating the life of the patron were planned from the start, in if not Pordenone's heroic visual idiom was largely respected addition to decorations in the apse and dome: "four canvases in the eighteenth-century repainting. Since this is the ensem at the two levels of the chapel, that is, two above and two below, ble that Tintoretto's paintings were designed to complete, it is painted with the stories of messer Saint Roch".27 Pordenone, worth pausing briefly to consider the way in which the frescoes

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Louise Marshall

responded to and amplified the impact of the tomb, with the sculpted figure of Roch standing on the sarcophagus.

Most evident is the sense of communication between

sculpted and painted protagonists, crossing and energis ing the space of the chapel [Figs 3-6].29 The patron saint's upward gaze and demonstrative self-exposure is given specific motive and direction, as he looks up to the transfigured Christ in the conch of the apse directly above him and beyond to God the Father gazing down and blessing from the cupola. Roch's display of his plague bubo is his characteristic gesture in Renaissance art, testifying to his patient endurance of suf fering and offering a model of hoped-for cure for worshippers that is here acted out before their own eyes in the benevolent interchange between Triune God and saint.30 The theme of rev elation evident in the Transfiguration, when Christ's divinity was first revealed to his followers in a blaze of glory almost beyond the strength of mortal eyes to bear, creates a heavenly parallel for the orchestrated rituals of concealment and revelation of

the holy body enacted at the tomb below, where the relics of the saint were normally hidden behind a cover and were only displayed at certain feasts and special occasions.31 Looking up at Christ, Roch is celebrated as a privileged 'friend of God', already enjoying the beatific vision of the elect prefigured at the Transfiguration. The reiteration of divine authority created by the presence of Christ in the apse and God the Father in the dome perhaps speaks to lingering uncertainties associated with Roch's cult.32 Father and Son collaborate in proclaiming Roch a saint, validating the body in the tomb and endorsing his veneration. The unfolding of the divine plan through history, evoked in the traditional iconography of the four evangelists in the pendentives and the paired church fathers in the lunettes of the side walls, the topmost tier of the two lower registers destined to be occupied by the saint's narratives [Figs 6, 7], takes on new resonance as a result of proximity to the relics, which become the nexus linking heaven and earth. The glories of the celestial realm are refracted through the tomb out to the devotees; Christ's promise of salvation is proclaimed by the thaumaturgie power of his saint, made available to all comers.

Although the paintings on the side walls were mentioned in the deliberations of 1528, and perhaps their subjects already chosen, it was to be another two decades before any effort was made to realise the scheme. The most likely reason for the delay is a decision to channel the confraternity's rapidly increas ing finances into the erection of a splendid new residence (the current Scuola, 1515-1549), opposite the by-now too small and unassuming earlier confraternal meeting house, known as the Scuoletta [Figs 1, 2].33 In particular, the extraordinary saga of the new residence's stair provoked heated disputes, not just in confraternal meetings but also publicly, in the form of architects

rebuked, dismissed or refusing to continue, and external com- 12. Giovanni Buora (attrib.), «St Roch», before 1508, mittees and adjudicators appointed by the Council of Ten. These Scuola di San Rocco, Venice

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12. Giovanni Buora (attrib.), «St Roch», before 1508, Scuola di San Rocco, Venice



13. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», 1549, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

wranglings went on for years and were only finally resolved after confraternity - care for the sick and the poor, as proclaimed in the 1545, when It was formally agreed to demolish the staircase gigantic canvas depicting Roch Healing Plague Victims [Fig. 13].36 built only a few years before and erect an entirely new design, The choice of Tintoretto as painter of the projected four at a stroke radically eclipsing all existing Venetian monumental canvases was most likely due to emulation and rivalry with the stairs and creating a whole new typology of magnificence. other Scuole Grandi. The San Rocco commission followed hard

The ostentation, pride and architectural pretensions of San on the heels of the artist's triumphant vindication at the Scuola Rocco's building program was explicitly denounced as waste- Grande di San Marco the previous year, when the Miracle of ful extravagance and an illegitimate misuse of funds that should the Slave was first rejected and then accepted by the patrons be devoted to charity by the evangelically-minded jeweller and in the face of great public acclaim.37 Yet at San Rocco too con writer Alessandro Caravia in a scathing satire of 1541 directed troversy was to ensue. The date of 1549 for Tintoretto's first against all the Scuole Grandi.34 Although the confraternity con- painting in the church is provided by the record of the artist's tinued its building program undeterred through the 1540s, the later acceptance into the Scuola in March 1565, following his depth of acrimony over the stair indicates a certain level of con- audacious outmanoeuvring of his rivals to win the commission cern amongst at least some of the membership over what one for the ceiling of the San Rocco Albergo (boardroom). The pre mlght call image or reputation management, with the nature of amble to the vote stated that Tintoretto had made "the painting the confraternity's architectural self-fashioning precisely the issue of the main chapel of [our] church" in 1549 and had then been under dispute. As Tom Nichols has persuasively argued, cer- promised membership, but this agreement had subsequently tain aspects of Tintoretto's later decorative program in the new "been forgotten".38 meeting house can be interpreted as a concerted rebuttal of The confraternity's failure to continue with the other three Caravia's critiques.35 In that sense the decision to return to the laterali or to admit the artist to membership in 1549 indicates projected laterali in 1549, once the tumult over the stair had that at this date Tintoretto was still a controversial if also highly subsided and building works were virtually complete, could celebrated artist, attracting criticism for his freedom of execution also be seen as a counter to Caravia's denunciations, repre- and lack of finish. Opposition to the artist at San Rocco is well senting as it does a much less controversial use of confraternal documented in later years, when one member offered to pay for funds, an act of devotion and piety towards the patron saint and a paintings only if the commission was not awarded to Tintoretto public affirmation of the saint's-and by extension, that of his titular and a substantial minority voted against his membership and,

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Louise Marshall

later still, against accepting his proposal of an annual salary in return for a seemingly endless supply of paintings.39 As schol ars have suggested, in 1549 the hostile intervention of Titian, a member of longstanding, may have been particularly decisive in blocking any further commissions at San Rocco to his rival.40 Strikingly, even a decade later, when supporters of Tintoretto within the Scuola were able to secure him the commission for

the doors of a second cupboard for liturgical objects in the nave, to match that painted by Pordenone thirty years earlier, the choir project was not renewed.41 Whatever the reasons, nothing further was done for two more decades, until April 1567, when the confraternity executive passed a resolution calling for the completion of the remaining three pictures.42 Payment records indicate that two at least were finished in this year by Tintoretto, now strongly ensconced at the Scuola and, with the imminent completion of the decoration of the Albergo, available for further commissions.43 The date of the fourth canvas is not

recorded in any extant confraternal documents. None of the documents specify the subject matter of any

of the four narratives. However, later descriptions of the church from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries indicate that the

current arrangement of paintings in the main chapel [Figs 7-8] is not original. From Marco Boschini's eloquent and evocative ekphrasis in La carta del navegar pitoresco of 1660, we learn that Roch Healing Animals was originally above the scene of the saint healing plague victims, and that his death in prison was surmounted by his Arrest.44 Boschini does not specify the wall occupied by each pair, but a few years later, in 1664, a French visitor to the church recorded the location of Roch healing plague victims on the right wall: 'Je fus à la Messe à Saint Roch, où je vis ces admirables ouvrages du Tintoret, principalment la Peste qu'il a peint au costé droit du choeur".45 Later viewers, from Antonio Zanetti in the early-eighteenth century to John Ruskin in the mid-nineteenth, corroborate this arrangement.46

The explicit descriptions of these visitors thus confirm the reconstruction of the original locations of Tintoretto's paintings put forward by Luigi Coletti in 1940 and accepted by most later scholars, until the recent publications of Maria Agnese Chiari Wiel suggested a different arrangement.47 Coletti's arguments took into account the somewhat cryptic references to location in the documents of 1567, along with the fact that Roch Healing Plague Victims is the only one of the four described in any detail 14. Titian, «St Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life», detail: «St Roch in Vasari's second edition of 1568, presumably on the basis Healing Plague Victims» (Come S[an] Rocho visita linfermí), ~k.;c wioit + ~ hccc c. 1517-1518, woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. of notes made during his visit to Venice in 1566, thus identi- _. ^ _ _. _ . ' . , . . , , . , ... Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum tying it as the first of the laterals, painted in 1549.4B The cur rent arrangement is therefore correct at the lower level - Roch Healing Plague Victims at the right and Death of Roch at the another painting by Tintoretto, Roch in the Wilderness, complete left - but the narratives of the upper level are not. Roch Healing with eighteenth-century additions at the side to make it match Animals, now placed at the upper left [Fig. 8], was originally Pordenone's cupboard door, has been placed at the upper right at the upper right. The Arrest of Roch, originally at the upper [Figs 7,11].49 Re-establishing the original arrangement allows for left, has been arbitrarily isolated on the right nave wall, and a clearer recognition of the ways in which Tintoretto organised

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14. Titian, «St Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life», detail: «St Roch Healing Plague Victims» (Come S[an] Flocho visita linfermi), c. 1517-1518, woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum



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ÜÜ 15. Antonio Boselli, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», 1515, chapel of Sts Anthony Abbot and Roch, S. Maria della Consolazione,

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16. Pascale Oddone (attrib.), «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», 1530, San Rocco, Brossasco (Piedmont)

his compositions in relation to their physical placement. This is revived in 1567 and two pictures were finished by September of hardly surprising - the artist's calculated engagement with lines that year. One of these was certainly the Death of Roch, for the of sight and lighting conditions elsewhere has often been noted lower left wall; the second is most likely Roch Healing Animals, - but has not so far been sufficiently recognised at San Rocco.50 diagonally opposite, on the upper level of the right wall.51 In the

In view of the long genesis of the commission, it may be absence of documents, the last canvas in the series, the Arrest of helpful at this point to briefly summarise the chronology, as has Roch, destined for the upper left wall, has been variously dated now been reconstructed. The choice of subjects for the four later- to 1567/68, the 1570s or, the current consensus, the first half of ali may have been made as early as 1528, as part of the planned the 1580s.52 Such variety indicates the hazards of attempting to decoration of the entire chancel area. The first painting to be com- determine Tintoretto's chronology by stylistic means alone, as pleted was, not surprisingly, one of the two larger canvases at the recent scholarship has recognised.53 Although this article has lower level. Roch Healing Plague Victims was painted in 1549 and followed the opinions of those much more expert in Tintoretto was hung on the lower right wall, where it was admired by Vasari connoisseurship than the present author, accepting a date in the in 1566. After languishing for nearly two decades, the project was 1580s for the Arrest, I would like to at least leave open the possi

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17. Battista da Legnano, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», 1534, Oratorio di San Rocco, Crana (Piedmont)

bility that this canvas was also completed around 1567 or shortly final completion and the extent of workshop involvement (much thereafter. This would certainly be the most logical possibility in greater in works after 1580) in the last painting of the series is terms of both the confraternity's priorities and the lack of any fur- less relevant than recognition of the cycle's thematic and visual ther commissions for the artist from the Scuola until 1575, when cohesiveness.

his offer to paint the central panel of the ceiling of the chapter It is often said that when painting scenes such as Roch hall was accepted. Nevertheless, for my purposes, the date of healing plague victims Tintoretto was inventing subject matter

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ed his first canvas In 1549.56 The Venetian Scuola's own earlier

production of Roch narratives, in the form of a fund-raising print particularly targeted to pilgrims en route to the Holy Land, com missioned from Titian around 1517-1518 [Fig. 9], also needs to be brought into consideration.57 This visual corpus is a funda mental point of departure for an analysis of Tintoretto's laterali. Exploration of the ways in which this existing narrative tradition was adopted, adapted, ignored or radically reworked can pro vide a new context within which to evaluate the strategic choices of both patrons and artist.

Such decisions can tell us a great deal about the devotion al and self-presentational aims of the commissioning confrater nity. When compared to earlier cycles, the Scuola's program is seen to be in some senses traditional and in others highly unusual. At San Rocco, the choice and placement of scenes across the two walls coheres around the twin themes of Roch's

healing powers on the right and the events leading to his death in prison on the left. This binocular focus is not matched in any previous cycle, even those similarly abbreviated, which tend to include a more evenly distributed, traditional saintly biographical arc, or to concentrate on aspects of Roch's life not presented here.58 Instead, the unusual shape of the Venetian cycle responds to the distinctive demands of the commission, not shared by any other - namely, proximity to the saint's rel ics. Tintoretto's canvases had to introduce and enhance the

worshipper's encounter with the sacred corpse, which took place immediately after he or she gained the space of the main chapel and passed through the painterly vanguard, as it were, to meet the saint himself, residing in his relics.59 Insistence on Roch's powers as healer during his lifetime, seen on the right wall, held out the promise of cure so fervently sought by those crowding the church and making vows at his tomb. Conversely, the chain of natural and supernatural events around Roch's death elaborated on the left wall endorsed his saintly status and

18. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», detail: «Plague focused attention on the subsequent fate of the holy corpse, on Victim Displaying his Bubo», 1549, San Rocco, Venice disp|ay at ,he nearby a,tar

Most striking when comparing Tintoretto's pictures with ex nuovo.54 However this is incorrect. In fact, Roch's life and earlier retellings is the conspicuous absence of the one epi miracles were quite often represented in monumental cycles sode that appears in every previous cycle. This is the depic across northern Italy, from the late-fifteenth through to the mid- tion of Roch as a victim of the plague in the wilderness outside sixteenth century.55 These earlier cycles are for the most part Piacenza, sustained in his retreat by a miraculous spring and the not well known, since they are often in rural or isolated loca- providential daily gift of bread by a dog stealing a loaf from the tions, are the work of minor local artists and have not previously table of a nearby nobleman, who one day followed the dog, dis been analysed as a group. Although each is inflected differently, covered the saint and became his disciple.60 For Renaissance such cycles demonstrate significant convergences, articulating worshippers, the spectacle of Roch's sufferings as a plague shared assumptions regarding Roch's cult. Moreover, some of victim lay at the heart of his appeal [Fig. 10]. Like Christ, his the more prominently sited instances or other now lost exam- endurance of physical torment was redemptive, the means by pies may have been known in Venice, such as the extensive which he gained his final reward from God, the power to protect cycle decorating the walls of the lower hall of the meeting house others from the disease he himself had endured. Marked by the of the Paduan confraternity of St Roch, underway in the 1530s buboes so familiar to worshippers from their own experience, and completed by 1544, only five years before Tintoretto paint- Roch's suffering body was the charismatic focus, far more so

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18. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims», detail: «Plague Victim Displaying his Bubo», 1549, San Rocco, Venice



19. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Plague Victims» (detail), 1549, San Rocco, Venice

than his subsequent cure. Yet this crucial and invariably repre- Scuola's domain and roused anticipation in the visitor entering sented episode is exactly not what the confraternity chose to the church. Within, the encounter between saint and devotee present in any of their four canvases. takes place in real time along the distance of the nave and

A number of possible explanations suggest themselves. across the space of the main chapel as he or she moves forward It may be that this scene was felt to be redundant in view of [Figs 3, 5]. The sculpted figure rising from the lid of the sarcoph the existence of no less than three sculpted renditions of Roch agus vivifies the exchange as a permanently visible manifesta exposing his bubo in the near vicinity: on the façade of the origi- tion of the saint, even when the relics remained concealed from nal meeting house, to the right of the church [Fig. 2]; crowning view. Yet despite the high prestige accorded to sculpture, par the apex of the church façade [Figs 1, 12]61; and as the central ticularly in Venice, for its qualities of three-dimensional actuality figure of the magnificent tomb-altarpiece [Fig. 5]. Such tangible, and antique associations, the relatively small scale of Mosca's three-dimensional evocations Identified the Scuola with their sculpted saint (108 cm), as well as its elevated position, limits its patron saint in his most characteristic moment of self-exposure, impact in terms of physical presence and immediacy. Moreover, soliciting devotion from his worshippers at the same time as he all of these figures are isolated and timeless, the saint in eternity, offers up the tokens of his suffering as his intercessory creden- detached from the specific historic narrative of Roch suffering tials to the deity he seeks to influence on their behalf. Externally, in the wilderness that every other pictorial cycle deemed an the two figures stressed the homogeneity of the campo as the essential element in the recounting of his life.

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i j without his customary exposed bubo on the thigh; instead, his i jfijá hose is resolutely rolled up and his body shows no signs of the ' ¿S-. disease.62 Although the Scuola did in fact later order a small

version of the popular subject of Roch in the Wilderness from Tintoretto, for an unknown but perhaps not very prominent site in the church, since it is never mentioned in later descriptions, there too Roch's bubo was discreetly veiled in shadow almost to the point of invisibility [Fig. 11].63

Notably, Roch is plague-free in the triumphant vision of his glorification in the ceiling of the Scuola's Albergo, where he is welcomed into heaven by God the Father in what was surely a deliberate reminiscence of the program of the San Rocco cappella maggiore, but with the suffering saint of the tomb now replaced by the disease-free saint of paradisal bliss. Even when Roch does expose his bubo, on the end wall of the enormous chapter hall of the Scuola, one has to look very close to discover the swelling on his left thigh, which almost blends into the colour of his skin.64 Along with the surprisingly fugitive presence of the patron saint from the entire program of the new confraternal resi dence as it unfolds over two stories and dozens of paintings (an absence that strongly contrasts with the extended cycle of Roch's life arrayed on the walls of the lower meeting room of the Paduan Scuola di San Rocco, as well as with the biographical cycles of their patron saints commissioned by the other Venetian Scuole Grandi for their residences65), such elisions may be indicative of a certain level of confraternal ambivalence vis-à-vis Roch's

status as a plague sufferer. During the sixteenth century, plague J ¡4 had come to be seen much more exclusively as a disease of the

"""*,11 • f T flr Ani poor and wretched rather than the elite.66 Avoidance of Roch as \ . plague victim may thus signal a certain unwillingness by Scuola

- members to recognise any such signs of social stigma in their f;,, own patron. In both church and residence, it is as if the saint is

f 'SW - '¡SBv./** MlímfíñÉÉk. being remade in a more socially acceptable image. By contrast, buboes - though of sufferers rather than of saint

20. Giovanni di Paolo, «St Nicholas of Tolentino Liberating t a h _ . _i » •. r- i r> ., ^ - are dramatically on display in the opening episode of Roch a Town from Plague», detail: «Funeral Procession», 1456, .... ... . rJT , , , , Gemaldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. Healln9 Pla9ue Vlctlms [R9- 131- The flrst of the four narratives Photo: Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna to be painted, this was an obvious choice for the church holding

the saint's relics, spelling out as it does the motive propelling devotees to visit the tomb. Scholarly assertions to the contrary,

All this is highly suggestive for what it reveals of confra- representations of Roch healing plague victims in the hospital ternal identification with their saintly patron. The choice of of Acquapendente (where he first performed cures) or at any of scenes mean that three of the four Venetian narratives show the many later stops on his Italian peregrinations, was not an Roch unmarked by plague, since they take place either before unknown iconography, in Venice or elsewhere, but was, unsur he contracted the disease (when he devoted himself to curing prisingly, one of the most popular and frequently represented plague victims at a number of sites throughout Italy) or after scenes in all earlier cycles [Figs 14-17],67 Understanding the his miraculous cure and departure from Piacenza to continue extent to which Tintoretto both drew upon and reshaped exist his travels (when he was arrested and imprisoned). That such ing conventions helps clarify our evaluation of his achievement avoidance is deliberate appears to be confirmed by the fact in what is often seen as a pivotal work in his career, a second that the one episode which does take place while Roch was 'breakthrough' picture after the Miracle of the Slave.68 stricken with plague, during his retreat in the woods outside Notwithstanding its bravura orchestration of space and Piacenza, Roch Healing Animals [Fig. 22], represents the saint light, Tintoretto's canvas shares with earlier versions an atten

172

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¡ •' -M' - ií 20. Giovanni di Paolo, «St Nicholas of Tolentino Liberating

a Town from Plague», detail: «Funeral Procession», 1456, Gemàldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna. Photo: Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna



21. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Animals», 1567, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

tion to particularised setting that clearly locates the event in the head of the woman at the far left) could recall the "four a contemporary hospital. In a period when many communities good women" employed by the Scuola to visit and care for sick built lazarettos - Venice most well known among them - and members (albeit in their own homes, not at the lazaretto) dur even the smallest settlement contained at least one civic hos- ing plague epidemics.72 At the same time, the women function pital, this episode would have resonated directly with viewers' as guides through the picture for the approaching devotees. At own experience. Beds are ranged in neat rows along the walls, the right, the woman standing in the doorway is closest to the usually underneath a window for the circulation of healthy air. beholder and is the tallest figure in the composition. Her inward A male official (spedalingo or rector) presides and the sick are gaze and focused attention ushers the visitor over the threshold, attended by female carers.69 These details give these healing Inside, the older female attendant at the right, assisting a plague scenes a veracity and immediacy which speak directly to wor- victim to rise, and the younger woman at the left bandaging shippers. The only departure from contemporary practice, in the buboes of a plague victim frame the central miracle and Tintoretto as in earlier examples, is the combination of male lead the eye through the composition. At the far left edge, the and female plague victims within a single shared space, com- inward lean of the woman craning to view the action funnels the pared to the strict segregation of the sexes characteristic of eye inward again to the miraculous cure, even as she gesture most Renaissance hospitals.70 Such artistic license maximised behind her, directing beholders out of the picture itself and on to Roch's appeal to both male and female supplicants. the ultimate goal of the tomb in the apse.

With its dramatic chiaroscuro, Tintoretto's picture veils but In Tintoretto's painting, as in earlier versions, naturalistic does not discard these details, placing beds along both walls, elements of setting and personnel climax in demonstrative dis under a bank of windows at the right, and including female plays of the patients' buboes [Figs 14-18]. Although not clini attendants caring for victims without fear of physical contact. cally accurate, these are nevertheless immediately recognis These women are strategically sited along the diagonal vectors able, magnetising the gaze by their inflamed colour as dreaded leading in and out of the enormous canvas and their presence signs of inevitable death imprinted on otherwise healthy male is charged with meaning for visitors and members alike. Their and female bodies.73 Here, as earlier, the pathos of the victims' solicitude in ministering to the sick - bringing food and drink, bared and disfigured flesh calls upon the saint for cure and lifting them up, bandaging their sores - idealises the Scuola as plays on contemporary fears to Insist upon Roch's proven ability a provider of charity, in direct refutation of Caravia's attacks of to heal the disease. Hence the outward orientation of the three a few years earlier.71 Confraternity members might find a more brightly lit plague victims at the left, whose deliberately staged specific message of comfort in the reflection that the Scuola ostentatio vulnerum presents their buboes to the contemporary takes care of Its own in times of plague, since the women's viewer as much as to Roch. Yet Tintoretto's suffering bodies are presence and even perhaps their numbers (in that there are also removed from reality by their idealising nudity - a strong four figures wholly on view, although there are five if one counts contrast with the contemporary clothing and nightshirts of ear

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m

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m 22. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Animais», 1567, San Rocco, Venice (viewed from below and from the right)

lier versions74 - and heroic poses derived from admired High of light leading the eye inwards encourage an empathetic pro Renaissance and antique prototypes. As Nichols has argued, jection further facilitated by the huge scale of the canvas. Awe such strategies create a socially acceptable fiction of what is increased by the quality of the light, whose golden glow is was a much more messy and contested reality.75 The disrepu- hardly explained by the row of windows in the upper right cor table and infected poor are recast as generic types of suffering ner. Irradiating the darkened interior with warmth, caressing the humanity, worthy and appropriately grateful recipients of confra- morbidly unhealthy flesh of the victims, dramatically spotlight ternal largesse and saintly healing. ing the central moment of saintly cure and seemingly gathering

Not accidentally, it is only by traversing the stricken bod- itself to greatest intensity in the halo outlining Roch's head, the ies of the plague victims that the viewer arrives at the saint: the light is heavenly rather than natural. As its concentration around inward motion also maps a sequence from affliction to hoped for Roch suggests, it is created by the presence of the saint, whose cure. Tintoretto's novel spatial construction not only responds relics in the apse could be seen as the ultimate source, dispel to the lateral placement of the painting in the main chapel and ling the darkness of the sickroom with the promise of cure, the resulting diagonal view, but also forces beholders to make The saint himself is intent on his task, leaning over an an active effort to discover the object of their desire - in this afflicted youth, whose naked torso is a highpoint of luminary case Roch performing an act of healing that they too hope to concentration unerringly drawing the gaze [Fig. 19]. Where in experience.76 The carefully arranged figurai chains and pools earlier versions, Roch often stands at some distance making

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23. Tintoretto, «St Roch Healing Animais», detail: «St Roch», 1567, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

the sign of the cross [Figs 14, 16, 17], here the cure is intimate per could imagine themselves under the healing hands of the and intense, the hand of the saint hovering close above the saint. The man in sober black bending forward over the young young man's chest, moving towards the inflamed bubo on the man from behind, his left arm outflung in a gesture of amaze sufferer's extended leg. Roch's forward tilt and outstretched arm ment, is probably to be identified as the prior, Vincenzo, whom also move towards the visitor progressing down the nave, fur- Diedo described as attempting to dissuade Roch from commit thering the empathetic projection by which the desiring worship- ting what he saw as deliberate suicide in his determination to

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Louise Marshall

24. Tintoretto, «Arrest of St Roch», 1580s?, San Rocco, Venice. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco

care for plague victims [Figs 14, 15, 17],77 His relegation to the The choice of a rarely-shown second healing scene, where shadows focuses attention on the moment of cure, while his Roch cures both animal and human supplicants from his wilder transformation from guardian to witness is amplified by another ness retreat, reiterates the healing to be derived from the relics man at his side, thereby inserting men of clear social stand- of the saint [Fig. 21 ].80 Reimagined in its original position, on ing and trustworthy repute into the narrative to authenticate the upper level of the right wall of the main chapel [Fig. 22], the the saint's curative abilities. In a visual conceit occasionally composition takes on new relevance and coherence. The direc encountered elsewhere, Tintoretto also prefigures the faithful tion of the figures in the canvas from right to left can now be hound who later feeds the saint in his affliction by including seen to relate directly to the movement of the worshipper along a dog here, on the floor before the bed, directly underneath the nave, continuing their forward motion toward the goal of the the saint.78 Placidly resting, the dog takes no part in the action, saint at the far end. This orientation explains the size of the man as if to signal that its time has not yet come, but its presence at the far right, closest to the approaching viewer, picked out in is a reminder of Roch's future providential rescue and saintly eye-catching red. Seen from behind and below, his back foot status. balances on the very edge of the lower frame, as if he has just

Behind and to the left of Roch, at the deepest point of the stepped into the painting from the chapel itself. The viewer is perspectival recession, tellingly bracketed by the foreshortened encouraged to join the procession and move towards the saint corpse laid out on the floor, so admired by Vasari, two attend- with the other petitioners. Once again, it is the relics that give ants wrestle a dead body head-first into its shroud [Figs 13, persuasive force to the composition, which becomes a pictorial 19], The abbreviated funeral procession common to plague epi- acting out of the worshippers' own approach to the saint in his demies, seen for example in Giovanni di Paolo's St Nicholas of tomb to beg for protection and healing. Tolentino Delivering a City from Plague [Fig. 20] stands by ready As the pilgrims' goal, Roch is placed directly above his rel to accompany the corpse to burial: a priest with a processional ics in the apse [Fig. 23]. From toe to head, his body inscribes cross and another figure holding a single candle.79 Shrouded in a strong diagonal that both springs from and leads down again darkness, lit only by the flickering light of a torch whose feeble to the tomb below. The result is almost apparitional, as if the saint glow cannot compete with the supernatural radiance flooding has materialised from the tomb itself, coalescing out of bones the dark interior, the burial group is placed directly behind and dust to take on visible form. More, he appears in response the healing miracle of the saint. Death is juxtaposed with life, to the appeals of his worshippers, and his gesture and pose is threat with cure. A vividly naturalistic detail grounded in con- one of compassionate readiness to answer their requests. Seen temporary experience, the vignette acts as a warning and spur head-on, as the canvas is invariably reproduced in modern publi to the beholder, a stark reminder of plague mortality and the cations, Roch's figure appears somewhat squat and misshapen, threat of death, which only Roch can relieve. Seen from the viewpoint of the approaching devotee, however,

176



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25. Francesco di Corrado, «Arrest of St Roch», 1516, San Rocco, Borgo Valsugana (Trentino)

diagonally from below and to the right, the saint's pose is both translation of his remains to Venice, the plague saint has become more elegant and more eloquent, leaning forward to meet the the city's loyal patron and defender, energetically responding to petitioners, his outstretched arm with its promise of healing mov- all those who invoke his aid. ing through the space of the chapel to encompass worshippers The original companion picture on the upper left wall was both painted and actual. At the head of the animal cavalcade, the the Arrest of Roch [Fig. 24], After he had been cured of plague lion of St Mark stands directly beneath the saint's hand, the first by divine decree, Roch left Piacenza to continue his travels, and most privileged recipient of his curative powers. The propa- Arriving in a region at war (topographic specificities are murky gandistic overtones are readily apparent: thanks to the efforts in the original vite), he was arrested as a spy and thrown into of the Scuola, Venice is now under Roch's protection. With the prison, where he died five years later.81 As a means of high

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26. Tintoretto, «Arrest of St Roch», detail: «Horsemen», 1567, San Rocco, Venice

lighting the saint's patient endurance of trials, the Arrest was approaching worshipper. In the far corner, a horse and rider are reasonably frequent in earlier cycles [Fig. 25].82 Tintoretto's about to crash heavily down over the edge of the picture, into version is, however, unique in its inclusion of a battle. Yet this the chapel itself [Fig. 26].83 Such a bravura evocation of murder is not an arbitrary decision, as is sometimes implied, but an and mayhem grabs the visitor by the throat, overwhelming with effective dramatisation of the reasons why Roch was arrested its ferocious energy and dramatic projections into the viewer's in a climate of fear and suspicion. Here the direction of the path. Against this background of controlled chaos, repeated picture is the exact opposite of its counterpart on the opposite diagonals of galloping horses, falling bodies and strategically wall. Instead of moving inward to the saint and his tomb, the placed branches lead the eye back to Roch's arrest. This takes canvas bursts outwards with extraordinary force. The compo- place at the very forefront of the picture, so that as he is hustled sition is once again keyed to the viewer in the nave, with all off by the soldiers, the saint moves towards his devotees, into the pictorial energies originating in the corner farthest away the space of the church itself. and rushing headlong to meet those moving down the nave In its original location on the upper left wall of the chancel, towards the main chapel and the tomb. Under the impact of the Arrest was placed above Roch's death in prison in the lower a fiery explosion, bodies hurtle through the air, their vectors register [Fig. 27]. Where on the right wall the narrative move carefully calculated to set them on a collision course with the ment is upward, with all the positive associations that conveys,

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27. Tintoretto, «Death of St Roch in Prison», San Rocco, Venice, 1567. Photo: Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, Venice

the descending sequence of the left wall brings the viewer earth- might make any request of God and it would be answered.87 ward to contemplate Roch's Passion-like progress towards suf- Roch's choice was to ask that all those afflicted by plague who fering and death. Almost never represented in earlier narratives petitioned God in his name would be healed. His request grant (with the significant exception of the confraternity's own earlier ed, the saint was taken living up to heaven for a taste of the print, Fig. 28), Roch's death was a logical choice for a church beatific vision, after which he composed himself neatly on the holding the body of the saint, representing as it were the rel- ground and quietly expired - as is seen in the confraternity's ear ics in the making: it is this expiring body which will one day lier print [Fig. 28]. Communication of his intercessory powers to come to rest in this very chapel. Perhaps in keeping with the the outside world was effected through a miraculous tablet dis emphasis on lay control of confraternal matters characteristic covered by his body, which proclaimed that any plague victims of Venetian scuole, where priests were only rarely admitted as who appealed to Roch would be cured. The celestial apparition members and were rigorously excluded from any governing so dramatically realised in this enormous canvas thus spells out role, the episode of Roch making his confession, described in in the clearest possible terms divine guarantee of the efficacy the vite and occasionally represented in earlier cycles, is passed of the saint's relics: God himself has endorsed the saint's cult over.84 Also suppressed is the traditional motif of the ascension and promised that all who invoked him will be healed. As in the of the saint's soul, lifted heavenwards in the arms of one or plague scene opposite, the brilliant light flooding the stygian more angels.85 Instead, Tintoretto represents Roch's death as gloom of the prison is supernatural in origin, and the angel has an incredibly dramatic event, as an angel wreathed in clouds even brought the heavens with him, to which he will shortly take and radiating light like a star hurtles towards the saint from the the saint in a foretaste of eternal glory. direction of the altar. The heavenly messenger's eruption into In comparison to earlier depictions of the imprisoned saint, the fetid gloom of Roch's cell indicates that this is not merely the most unprecedented feature of Tintoretto's version is the a visit of angelic consolation, as is sometimes suggested (for host of prisoners sharing Roch's cell. This contradicts all earlier example by the customary title Roch in Prison Comforted by an accounts, written and pictorial, where a central feature of the Angel), but the very moment when the saint's sufferings receive saint's biography is his expiry alone and unrecognised in a town their heavenly reward.86 governed by his own uncle [Figs 28, 29]. Although the addition

According to Roch's vite, as he was preparing for death, of a large supporting cast is characteristic of Tintoretto's innova a voice spoke to him, informing him that before he died, he tive retelling of sacred narrative, it seems to me that in this case

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29. Gualtiero dall'Arzere, «St Roch in Prison», c. 1536, , ■ Oratorio di San Rocco, Padua

C OWLE 'S» ROCHO III could function as models and exemplars for the worshippers v*r\nT'rt III massing before the tomb, who are likewise made witnesses not

just to the moment of the saint's death but to his interior super

-mn oijjil natural encounters, here externalised and dramatised to catch up the viewer as if it is occurring before their very eyes.

mmmmmmmrn' \ The seconcj notable feature is the consideration and, in » ** ' '&■ some cases, devotion, paid to Roch by his fellow prisoners. In

oo TV o» □ u Jr- U.O «u' i x . . .. _ .. , the Scuola canvas, the saint dies not alone and unrecognised, 28. Titian, «St Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life», detail: «Death of , . , a . St Roch in Prison» (Come S[an] Rocho e morto), c. 1517-1518, but surrounded by an alternative family who cares for him and woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. recognises his sanctity. In the companionship and reverence Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum they offer the dying saint, the prisoners are surrogates for the

members of the confraternity, who often spoke of themselves as the "sons" of their beloved patron.88 This solicitous care of

there may be more specific reasons related to the commission. the saint lies at the heart of the picture, in the central pyramidal One effect is to authenticate Roch's divinely-bestowed curative group of the dying Roch and his attendants [Fig. 30]. This cen powers - the reason for recourse to the relics in the church - tral group is carefully positioned to respond to both contempo beyond any possibility of dispute. Almost all the prisoners see rary visitor and heavenly apparition. Strategically lit to draw the and respond to the angel, so that what was previously a private eye, the white loincloth and body of the man at the left, leaning mystical experience is now shared by multiple witnesses. Even inwards to support Roch on the bed, inscribes a rising diagonal the dog resting before Roch's bed, whose presence defies strict from knee to head that aligns with the oncoming direction of the chronology to once again pay homage to the faithful canine pro- worshipper. Gazing at the angel, his arms opening in welcome vider who had come to be seen as Roch's near invariable com- as a sign of his readiness to surrender his spirit, Roch is also panion (as previously at Padua, Fig. 29), lifts its head to gaze turning like a sunflower towards the source of his existence, at the onrushing angel. The gathered congregation of prisoners towards the altar, to the presence of Christ in the sacrament -

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COM.E • S» ROCHO ï XOKTQ

28. Titian, «St Roch and Eight Scenes of his Life», detail: «Death of St Roch in Prison» (Come S[an] flocho e morto), c. 1517-1518, woodcut, British Museum, inv. no. 1860,0414.140. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum

WÈËÊBB^m 29. Gualtiero dall'Arzere, «St Roch in Prison», c. 1536,

Oratorio di San Rocco, Padua



since 1561, the confraternity had been permitted to display the consecrated host in a tabernacle above the high altar89 - and to the Father and Son represented in the dome and conch of the apse. At the same time, he is deliberately arranged to be visible to worshippers in the nave, his legs and torso pointing left, his body near frontal, and his arms spread wide in the sign of the cross which is also, as was often said of the crucified whom he here emulates, a loving embrace, directed outward to the approaching devotee [Fig. 8].

The exposition of the dying saint to the faithful in the nave by the two helpers who surround him invokes the Scuola's cer emonial revelation of the saint's body for privileged visitors and on important feast days. Roch's presence in the relics is thus made reassuringly immediate. Touching, holding and displaying the holy body, the attendants act out the privileged role of the confraternity as possessors and guardians of the holy corpse. This sense of ownership is most evident in the man dressed 30- Tintoretto, «Death of St Roch in Prison», detail: «Roch and in white who stands behind Roch, cradling him protectively, Attendants», 1567, San Rocco, Venice almost jealously encircling him with his arms. He is also the most decorously dressed, the only one of all the prisoners who favoured as the saint's resting place and his curative powers is not partially or wholly bare-chested. All these details make it could be accessed by all. tempting to suggest that this figure might be a portrait, literal or In conclusion, this article has argued that despite their guise, of the current Guardian Grando, Benedetto Ferro, identi- chronological disjunctions, Tintoretto's four laterali constitute a fied by Massimi as one of the pro-Tintoretto faction within the coherent cycle focused around the saint's relics. In a sophisti Scuola.90 The faces of the other two members of this privileged cated interplay between visual imagery and embodied presence, trio, one of whom crosses his arms in devotion whilst the other the narratives validated the sacred body, assured worshippers of helps support the expiring saint, also appear somewhat more its authenticity and efficacy and visually proselytised on Roch's individualised than their fellow prisoners, again raising the pos- behalf. Mediating and orchestrating the devotional experience, sibility of contemporary portraits, perhaps of the two other most they drew visitors forward by the lure of their grandiose forms, senior members of the confraternity executive (Banca), the Vicar so forcefully calculated in terms of lines of sight and movement and the Guardian da Matin.91 In any event, whether or not one through space. Recast in a more socially acceptable image, recognises these three as portraits or as generic types, their as beneficent healer rather than disreputable victim, Roch also privileged access to the saint's body strongly articulates the reached out to his sons in the Scuola, endorsing their care of his confraternity's sense of ownership of their saint, whose relics body after his death. As the guardians of his relics, the confrater they had located and brought in triumph to Venice. In this way, nity was glorified as the essential broker in the curative exchange Tintoretto's canvas celebrates the Scuola's history and mis- between devotee and saint. One may thus affirm that, in every sion, as the ones who brought Roch out of obscurity and gave respect, Tintoretto's narratives successfully fulfilled the charge him the honour he deserved, so that Venice is now especially laid upon him by the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

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30. Tintoretto, «Death of St Roch in Prison», detail: «Roch and Attendants», 1567, San Rocco, Venice


Louise Marshall

Research in Venice for this article was supported by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, UK. An earlier version was delivered at the Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America in Ven ice in April 2010.1 am deeply grateful to Sig. Franco Posocco, Guardian Grando, Sig. Enrico Zane and other members of the Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, for generously facilitating my research. Paolo Ascagni provided invaluable assistance in obtaining permissions and photographs. Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel kindly shared with me her extensive knowledge of the Scuola's history. Warm thanks to Patricia Simons for her meticulous reading of the final draft and Nerida Newbigin for assistance with knotty translations. All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted.

1 See J. Grabski, "The Group of Paintings by Tintoretto in the Sala Ter rena in the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice and their Relationship to the Architectural Structure", Artibus et Historiae, 1, 1980, pp. 115-131; R. Pallucchini and R Rossi, Tintoretto: le opere sacre e profane, 2 vols, Venice, 1982 (all references hereafter are to volume 1); D. Rosand, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice. Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, 1st pub.

1982, 2nd rev. ed., Cambridge, 1997, pp. 134-164; G. Romanelli, Tin toretto: la Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Milan, 1994; idem, "Tintoretto a San Rocco: committenza, teología, iconografía", in Jacopo Tintoretto net quarto centenario délia morte: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Padua, 1996, pp. 91-95; B. Aikema, "Santa povertà e pietas vene tiana: osservazioni sul significato della decorazione della Sala Terrena della Scuola di San Rocco", ibid., pp. 185-190; T. Nichols, Tintoretto, Tradition and Identity, London, 1999, pp. 148-229; V. Sapienza, "Miti, metafore e profezle: le storie di Maria di Jacopo Tintoretto nella Sala Terrena della Scuola Grande di San Rocco", Venezia Cinquecento, 17, 2007, pp. 49-139.

2 St Roch Healing Plague Victims, 1549; Death of St Roch in Prison, 1567; St Roch Healing Animals, 1567; Arrest of St Roch, 1580s?: Pallucchini and Rossi, cat. nos 134, 300, 301, 415.

3 Tintoretto, ed. M. Falomir, exh. cat., Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007 (esp. F. Ilchman, "Tintoretto as Painter of Religious Narrative", pp. 63-94, and idem, "The major pictorial cycles, 1555-75", pp. 287-293); Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, ed. idem, exh. cat., Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 2009.

4 H. Dormeier, "Nuovi culti di santi intorno al 1500 nelle città della Ger mania méridionale. Circonstanze religiose, sociali e materiali della loro introduzione e affermazlone", In Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in Ger

mania prima della Riforma, ed. R Prodi and R Joanek, Bologna, 1984, pp. 317-352; R Bolle, "Saint Roch de Montpellier, doublet hagiographique de saint Raco d'Autun. Un apport décisif de l'examen approfondi des incunables et imprimés anciens", In Scribere sanctorum gesta. Recueil d'études d'hagiographie médiévale offert à Guy Philippart, ed. E. Rénard

et al., Turnhout, 2005, pp. 525-572; idem, "Saint Roch, une question de méthodologie", in San Rocco. Genesi e prima espansione di un culto. Incontro di studio, ed. A. Rigon and A. Vauchez (Subsidia Hagiographi ca, 87), Brussels, 2006, pp. 9-56; H. Dormeier, "Un santo nuovo contro la peste: cause del successo del culto di san Rocco e promotori della sua diffusione al Nord delle Alpi", ibid., pp. 225-243. The classic ear lier study is A. Vauchez, "Rocco", Bibliotheca Sanctorum, Rome, 1968, vol. 11, pp. 264-273; cf. idem, "San Rocco: tradizionl agiografiche e sto ria del culto", in San Rocco nell'arte: un pellegrino sulla Via Francigena, exh. cat., Milan, 2000, pp. 13-19; idem, "Un modèle hagiographique et cultuel en Italie avant saint Roch: le pèlerin mort en chemin", in San Rocco. Genesi e prima espansione..., pp. 57-70.

5 Latin text of the earliest vita by Francesco Diedo in Acta Sanctorum [AASS], Augusti, III, ed. J. Pinius, Antwerp, 1735, pp. 399-410; Acta Sanctorum: the full text database, Cambridge, 2003; English transla tion, I. Vaslef, "The Role of St Roch as a Plague Saint: A Late Medieval Hagiographie Tradition", PhD, Catholic University of America, 1984, pp. 179-218. For inaccuracies in AASS texts, see Bolle 2006, pp. 11-12, 34. Edited transcriptions by Bolle and other scholars of nine fifteenth-cen tury vite, including both Latin and Italian versions of Diedo (on which, see below), are published in the hagiographical archive section of the website of the Italian Association of St Roch: <http://www.sanroccodi montpellier.it/italiano/archivio_agiografie.htm>. In this article, all refer ences to Roch's vita will be to Diedo's Italian text, La vita de sancto Rocco, Milan, 1479, transcribed by Bolle in 2001 and downloadable as a PDF from this website (hereafter cited as Diedo/Bolle, with folio numbers to the original incunable in brackets and page references to the PDF).

6 A. Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen age, d'après les procès des canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Bibliothèque des Écoles Française d'Athènes et de Rome, 241), Rome, 1981.

7 G. Tournoy, "Francesco Diedo: Venetian Humanist and Politician of the Quattrocento", Humanística Lovaniensia, 19, 1970, pp. 201-234.

8 Five Latin and two Italian editions were published between 1479-1495; the most accurate list is in Bolle 2005, pp. 538-541. As Alison Frazier has noted, Diedo's vita was the sole bestseller in the genre of humanist hagiography, a direct function of the prophylactic powers of his subject: A. Frazier, Possible Lives. Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy, New York, 2005, pp. 38-39, 322-323. The complex history of later derivations from Diedo (including the Acta Breviora, previously regarded as record ing an independent early fifteenth-century vita) is most thoroughly ana lysed in Bolle 2006, pp. 9-42. Several other early vite from Northern Italy have recently come to light, most clearly postdating and depend ent upon Diedo. However one, by Domenico da Vicenza, has been dated c. 1478-1480 and its precise relationship to Diedo's text remains the subject of discussion. See Bolle 2006, pp. 89-90; F. Lomastro, "Di una Vita manoscritta e della prima diffusione del culto di san Rocco a Vicenza", in San Rocco. Genesi e prima espansione..., pp. 99-116; P Ascagni, "Le più antiche fonti scritte su san Rocco di Montpellier. Un excursus comparativo e sistemático delle agiografie rocchiane", Vita Sancti Rochi, 1, 2006, pp. 19-57.

9 Vaslef, pp. 99-137; Bolle 2005, pp. 534, 562, where Diedo's vita is characterised as a hagiographie novel ("un roman hagiographique"), following the distinctions of hagiographie genres first defined by Hippol yte Delehaye in his classic study, Les legendes hagiographique, 4th ed., Brussells, 1955.

10 These divergences are clearly summarised in atable of the various early editions in Bolle 2005, pp. 550-551, and analysed 554ff; idem 2006, p. 16.

11 On such narratives, see R J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, 1st pub. 1978, rev. ed. Princeton, 1990; for Roch's relics, R Bolle and R Ascagni, Rocco di Montpellier, Voghera e il suo santo, Voghera, 2001, pp. 31-41; Bolle 2006, pp. 49-51.

12 Dormeier 1984; idem, "St. Rochus, die Pest und die Imhoffs in Niirnberg vor und wàhrend der Reformation. Ein spâtgotischer Altar in seinem religiôs-liturgischen, wirtschaflich-rechtlichen und sozialen Umfeld", Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 1985, pp. 7-72; idem, "Venedig als Zentrum des Rochuskultes", in Niirnberg und Italien. Begegnungen, Einflüsse und Ideen, ed. V. Kapp and F. R. Haussmann

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(Erlanger romanistiche Dokumente und Arbeiten, 6), Tubingen, 1991, pp. 105-127; idem, "Der Rochusaltar in seinem religiôsen, wirtschafli chen und sozialen Umfeld", in St. Lorenz. Hundert Jahre Verein zur Erhaltung 1903-2003, Nuremberg, 2004, pp. 27-34; idem 2006.

13 Bolle 2005, pp. 560-561 ; idem 2006, p. 34.

14 Bolle 2005, pp. 563-572; idem 2006, pp. 42-49; cf R. Godding, "San Rocco di Montpellier, un doppione agiografico? Culto e leggenda di san Rocco di Autun", in San Rocco. Genes/' e prima espansione..., pp. 71-82.

15 Noted by André Vauchez, "Introduction", in San Rocco. Genes/' e prima espansione..., pp. 4-5.

16 The Venetian ambassador would surely have been familiar with the church of San Rocco and its decorations, including Tintoretto's narra tives, given the attendance of the doge and Senate at the annual cel ebrations of the saint's feast. The extended chronology of Tintoretto's cycle, begun in 1549 but not finally completed until either 1567 or even

the 1580s (depending on dating on stylistic grounds, discussed below), means that it could not have been commissioned in response to this most recent crisis, but once executed, the San Rocco iaterali could cer tainly serve such propagandistic aims. Venetian reaction to the pope's proposal was horrified: the ambassador warned a cardinal of the gen eral scandal which would result if Roch were to be denounced. This

prediction may have had an effect; in the event, Sixtus V did not pursue the matter. Later popes put any lingering fears to rest with the formal introduction of Roch's name into the Roman martyrology. See Vauchez 1968, p. 272; Vaslef, pp. 138-139; Bolle 2006, p. 55.

17 The authoritative study of the ceremonial, devotional, charitable and financial activities of the Scuole Grandi in general and San Rocco in particular is B. Pulían, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: the Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620, Oxford, 1971. See also the further clarifications by the same author: "Nature and Character of the Scuole", in Le scuole di Venezia, ed. T. Pignatti, Milan, 1981, pp. 9-26; "The Scuole Grandi of Venice. Some Further Thoughts", in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattro cento, ed. T. Verdón and J. Henderson, Syracuse, 1990, pp. 273-301. More recently, Franco Tonon has published important studies of the Scuola's history and activities using its abundant archive: F. Tonon, Scuola dei battuti di San Rocco: documenti sulle origini e illustrazione dei capitoli delle Mariegole (Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arcicon fraternita di San Rocco, 5), Venice, 1998; idem, La Scuola Grande di San Rocco net Cinquecento attraverso i documenti delle sue Mariegole (Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, 6), Ven ice, 1999; idem, Devotissima Scuola e fraternité del glorioso missierSan Rocco. Registro delle Parti, 1488-1549 (Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, 9), Marghera, 2003.

18 The exception being the Scuola di San Teodoro, which possessed the body of St Theodore the warrior. The contrasts between the history of this confraternity and that of San Rocco nevertheless underlines the much greater value placed on the body of Roch. Although much older and more well established (being founded in the mid fourteenth cen tury), the Scuola di San Teodoro was not raised to the level of a Scuola Grande until 1552, and for much of the sixteenth century possession of the patron's relics was repeatedly contested by the Augustinian Canons of San Salvador, in whose church the confraternity chapel and altar were located. See S. Gramigna and A. Perissa, Scuole Grandi e Piccole a Venezia tra arte e storia. Confraternité di mestieri e devozione in sei

itinerari, Venice, 2008, pp. 26-36.

19 For the 1489 agreement with the Franciscans to lease land on which to build the planned church and meeting house, and the long history of subsequent disputes over the confraternity's failure to observe all the conditions of the original agreement, particularly the prohibition against a free-standing campanile, see Pulían 1971, p. 49; Tonon 1999, pp. 10-17, 39-44; idem 2003, pp. 26-29.

20 U. Franzoi and D. di Stefano, Le chiese di Venezia, Venice, 1976, pp. 48-50; J. McAndrew, Venetian Architecture of the Early Renaissance, Cambridge, 1980, pp. 507-510; R. Lieberman, Renaissance Architec ture in Venice, 1450-1540, New York, 1982, p. 20, pis 32-33; G. Teseo, "Ricerca storica e catalogazione techniche costruttive e restauri della chiesa di San Rocco a Venezia", Bollettino d'arte, 80/81, 1993, pp. 121-154; M. A. Chiari Moretto Wiel, "II culto di San Rocco a Venezia: la Scuola Grande, la sua chiesa, il suo tesoro", in San Rocco neti'arte, exh. cat., Milan, 2000, pp. 67-81 ; M. A. Chiari Moretto Wiel, F. Posocco and F. Tonon, The Scuola Grande di San Rocco and its Church (Marsilio Guides), Venice, 2009 (hereafter Wiel et al. 2009). Until recently, the architect was identified with Bartolomeo Bon from Bergamo, active in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries (not to be confused with the Venetian sculptor and architect of the same name, Bartolomeo di Giovanni Bon, c. 1400/10-c. 1464/67). However, in 1983 Stefano Mari ani demonstrated that Bartolomeo died around 1509 and uncovered the

existence of Pietro Bon (d. 1529), also Bergamasque in origin and most probably his son, since he took over commissions from Bartolomeo when the latter was sent on missions away from Venice in the 1490s. Which "maestro Bon" was the first architect of the Scuola, responsible for the church and the original confraternity residence - both begun following the 1489 pact and completed by the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century - remains under discussion; for Richard Goy, it is Bartolomeo, while Gianmario Guidarelli attributes all the San Rocco commissions to Pietro, who was certainly the Bon appointed as proto for the new confraternity residence in 1517. See M. Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinascimento: religione, scienza, architettura, Turin, 1985, pp. 80-81 n. 3; R. Goy, "Bon/Buon, ii", in Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, updated and revised 30/3/2000, <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/sub scriber/article/grove/artAT012287> (accessed 5/8/2010); G. Guidarelli, Una giogia ligata in piombo: la fabbrica della Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venezia, 1517-1560 (Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arcicon fraternita di San Rocco, 8), Venice, 2002, pp. 11, 14-18.

21 The other four Scuole Grandi all had altars in churches owned and serviced by clerics: the Dominicans at Santi Giovanni e Paolo (Scuola di San Marco); Augustinian Canons Regular at Santa Maria della Carità (Scuola della Carità); and priors appointed by the families who main tained patronage rights over the churches they founded or administered at San Giovanni Evangelista (Scuola di San Giovanni) and Santa Maria in Valverde (Scuola della Misericordia). See Pulían 1971, pp. 48-49; Franzoi and di Stefano, pp. 30-31, 139-143, 216-223, 424-441; Le Scuole di Venezia, ed. T. Pignatti, Milan, 1981 ; R Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice, New Haven, 1993, pp. 110-121.

22 Often noted by architectural historians in relation to the confraternity's later residence. See for example R Sohm, "The Staircases of the Vene tian Scuole Grandi and Mauro Coducci", Architecture, 8, 1978, p. 145: "The position of the Scuola di S. Rocco as the most recently established of the scuole grandi was a factor that recognizably influenced its build ing program. Lacking the tradition acquired over the centuries by the other scuole, S. Rocco relied on the examples of their predecessors for all aspects of their bureaucracy and activities".

23 Earlier Gothic examples include San Giovanni in Bragora (begun c. 1475), although the Renaissance details of San Rocco are more

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Louise Marshall

explicitly modelled on Mauro Codussi's reconfiguration of the traditional type at San Michele in Isola (c. 1468-1478). For earlier Venetian Gothic church façades, see Lieberman, pp. 237-239; D. Howard, The Architec tural History of Venice, London, 1981, pp. 67-77; R. Goy, Venice: The City and its Architecture, London, 1997, pp. 169-172. For San Rocco, see Lieberman, pp. 15, 20, pis 32-33; and McAndrew, p. 509 (describ ing the San Rocco façade as "of Codussian type in a variation hard to believe successful").

24 Confraternal dissatisfaction with the display of the body was a major issue in 1493, when the relics were still in their temporary resting place in the subsidiary apse to the left of the cappella maggiore in the incom plete church. In that year, it was resolved to move the relics to the high altar and commission an altarpiece, since "the body of the glorious St Roch is not in the form in which it should be, nor is it as ornamented as are the other holy bodies [of the city]" ("atento chel chorpo del gloroxio messer san rocho non sta in quela forma se rechiede ne son ornato chôme son altrj chorpj santj [...]"): Venice, Archivio di Stato, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, II consegna, busta 44, f. 23v, quoted in Teseo 1993, p. 142; Wiel 2000, p. 73. As a result, the Scuola com missioned an altarpiece and marble container for the body, although the relics remained in the side altar, an arrangement described by a German pilgrim in 1497. The same complaints were often repeated; in 1516, when the altarpiece-tomb was being planned, it was observed that "our high altar at present looks like an orphan, but it must be pro vided for" ("al presente ditto altar nostra grando par cosa orphana; et pero è da proveder [...]"): Archivio di San Rocco, Registro delle Parti, I (1488-1542), f. 58v, quoted in Tonon 2003, pp. 20, 33.

25 See Humfrey 1993, pp. 273-274, on the enduring prestige of sculpture as a medium for altarpieces in Venice, including the eloquent polemic of Tullio Lombardo on behalf of the genre in 1526, soon after the com pletion of the San Rocco altarpiece, writing to a prospective patron ("the altarpiece will be an everlasting memorial [...] painting is a tran sitory thing, hardly to be compared to sculpture [...]"); for the San Rocco tomb/altarpiece, ibid., pp. 111, 291-292, 357; McAndrew, p. 510. For the sculptures, see A. Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano: A Renaissance Sculptor in Italy and Poland, 2 vols, University Park, 1998, vol. I, pp. 24-26, 41-46, 191-193, 261-265, cat. 16; vol. II, figs 10-12, pis 12-30. For Sanudo's admiring comments, see Wiel 2000, p. 73.

26 Pulían 1971, pp. 157-158; Tonon 2003, pp. 31-38; J. Anderson, "Christ Carrying the Cross in S. Rocco: Its Commission and Miraculous His tory", Arte veneta, 31, 1977, pp. 186-188; M. A. Chiari Moretto Wiel, "II Cristo portacroce della Scuola di San Rocco e la sua lunetta", Atti dell'lstituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, 156,1998, pp. 687-731 ; eadem, "Giorgione or Titian? The Christ Carrying the Cross at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco", paper delivered at the Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Venice, 2010; I am grateful to the author for kindly providing me with a copy.

27 "quattro teleri dalle do' bande della cappella, zoè doi de' sotto e doi di sopra de depentura cum la historia di messer san roccho": Venice, Archivio di San Rocco, Registro delle Parti, I, f. 126v, 26 February 1528; Pallucchini and Rossi, pp. 192-193.

28 C. E. Cohen, The Art of Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone: Between Dia lect and Language, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1996, vol. I, pp. 265-273, vol. II, pp. 623-630, cat. nos 51-52.

29 Such thematic and illusionistic connections across space are charac teristic of Pordenone. See J. Schulz, "Pordenone's Domes", in Studies

in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blunt on his 60th birthday, London, 1967, pp. 44-50; Humfrey, p. 292; Cohen, vol. I, p. 266.

30 For earlier representations, see L. Marshall, "Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy", Renaissance Quarterly, 47, 1994, pp. 502-506; eadem, "Confraternity and Community: Mobilizing the Sacred in Times of Plague", in Confraternities and the Visual Arts in the Italian Renaissance. Ritual, Spectacle, Image, ed. B. Wisch and D. Cole Ahl, Cambridge, 2000, pp. 29-34; eadem, "II culto di San Rocco in Toscana nel tardo Quattrocento: i quadri di Bartolomeo della Gatta in Arezzo", Vita Sancti Rochi, 2, 2008, pp. 96-109.

31 The reliquary casket was covered by a gilded copper 'antependium' ("I'antipetto del Casson"): see Markham Schulz, vol. I, pp. 192-193, for the 1521 record of work remaining to be done on the tomb, which lists gilding of the cover as item 7. Confraternity debates frequently discussed provisions for special showings of the body to distinguished visitors, in addition to regular displays on important feast days. The mechanics by which to ensure a suitably impressive raising and lower ing of the cover was an issue in the 1520s, leading to the commission ing of a special mechanical device ("un inzegno") in 1527: Tonon 2003, pp. 20-22. At some later date, the copper cover was replaced by the present wooden one, on which see below, n. 56. For a colour photo graph of the tomb with the cover removed, see B. Bertoli, Arte e teologia nel culto di San Rocco (Quaderni della Scuola Grande Arciconfraternita di San Rocco, 3), Venice, 1996, fig. 1.

32 It might be objected that God the Father surrounded by angels was a motif dear to Pordenone that he repeated in almost all his dome com missions (cf. Schulz 1967), but it nevertheless remains true that in each case the divine figure takes on specific meanings in relation to the other elements of the decoration, as is suggested here.

33 On the Scuola residences old and new and the controversies generated by the latter, see Sohm 1978, pp. 125-149; McAndrew, pp. 519-524; Howard, pp. 133-135; Lieberman, p. 26, pis 86-89; Tafuri, pp. 125-154; Goy 1997. pp. 222-227; Weil 2000, pp. 69-71; Guidarelli, 2002; Weil et al. 2009, pp. 13-17.

34 On Caravia, see Pulían 1971, pp. 117-121, 130-131; Tafuri, pp. 125 128; J. J. Martin, Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renais sance City, London, 1993, pp. 157-158.

35 Nichols 1999, pp. 149-152.

36 It Is nevertheless a general, idealising evocation, in that the Scuola di San Rocco did not own or administer a hospital for plague victims or others, and was not involved in caring for the infected poor (except in the provision of nurses for members, to be discussed below). As Brian Pulían has demonstrated, focus on their own membership as the primary recipients of charity is characteristic of all the Scuole Grandi. By the early sixteenth century, members were divided into separate orders of rich benefactors who constituted the governing elite and poor members who were barred from office and were the designated recipi ents of confraternal charity, often contingent on the performance of devotional acts for the good of the membership as a whole, such as attendance at funerals and self-flagellation in processions. However, this was to change over the course of the sixteenth century. Between 1528 and 1585, a series of substantial bequests to the Scuola dl San Rocco established trusts administered by the confraternity, whose charitable remit extended to "all the unfortunate poor of the city", in the words of one testator. Pulían has estimated that the largest proportion of these funds were used in almsgiving, followed by the provision of dowries; smaller amounts were donated to deserving Institutions such as con

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vents and hospitals. See Pulían 1971, pp. 63-131, 157-193, and the list of Venetian hospitals, including five administered by the other four Scuole Grandi but not San Rocco, at pp. 423-428.

37 The controversy was recorded by Carlo Rldolfi in his 1648 biography of the artist: C. Ridolfi, The Life of Tintoretto, and of His Children Domenico

and Marietta, trans. C. Enggass and R. Enggass, University Park, 1984, pp. 25-26. Pietro Aretino's public letter to Tintoretto in April 1548 con gratulating him on his success nevertheless warned him against hasty execution ("la prestezza del fatto") and a guidebook of 1556 observes of a Tintoretto painting In the Palazzo Ducale that it "seems unfinished; I think this is the result of his great speed". Both quotes are cited and discussed in R. Echols, "The Decisive Years: 1547-1555", in Falomir 2007, pp. 213-214; for the full text of Aretino's two letters of this year, ibid.,

p. 420. For further discussion, see Pallucchini and Rossi, pp. 34-36,157 158, cat. 132; Rosand 1997, pp. 134-139; Nichols 1999, pp. 139-145.

38 "Fino dal 1549 fo fatto il quadro délia cappella grande in giexia per ser iacomo tentoretto, al quale ge fo promesso oltra al preccio alui dato di metterlo in la schola nostra la qual cosa è stata desmentigatta [...]": Archivio di San Rocco, Registro delle Parti, II, f. 277v, 11 March 1565. See Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 158; M. E. Massimi, 'Uacopo Tintoretto e i con fratelli della Scuola Grande di San Rocco: stratégie culturali e com mittenza artistica", Venezia Cinquecento, 5, 1995, p. 35; Falomir 2007, p. 426. It was a common practice for Venetian confraternities to reward artists carrying out major commissions with membership: Pignatti, p. 48.

39 The pro- and anti-Tintoretto groupings of members has been exhaus tively charted by Massimi, pp. 5-169; for the specific examples cited, ibid., pp. 32-35.

40 Massimi, pp. 35, 96; Wiel 2000, pp. 76-77; Falomir 2007, pp. 287-288.

41 Christ at the Pool of Betheseda, 1559, now joined as a single picture and hung on the left nave wall. See Pallucchini and Rossi, pp. 60,179-180, cat. 226; Massimi, pp. 66-74; Nichols 1999, pp. 155-156.

42 "chel se possi far li tre quadri in capella granda de la nostra giesia videli cet doi di sopra e uno da basso per mezzo I'altro quadro": Archivio della Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Registro delle parti, II, f. 291v, 13 April 1567: Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 193.

43 Tintoretto was paid for three paintings for the cappella grande later that year, although only two of these were choir laterals, along with a third now lost painting of the Annunciation originally placed above a door: "Spese nelll 3 quadri fatti I'anno 1567 in chiesa in capella granda. Contadi a miser Giacomo Tintoretto per sua mercede cos) d'accordo di haver fatto detti 3 quadri, cioè I'uno della banda della Sagrestia et I'altro daN'altra banda di sopra, et il timpano messo davanti il quadro della SS Annonciata sopra la porta dell'Albergo di fuora": Archivio di San Rocco, Chiesa e Scuola, fasc. 47, Summario di quanta fu speso nella Fabbrica della Scola Grande di S. Roccho [...] il tutto estratto dalli Libri Maestri di detta Scola. Another copy of the same Summary of expenses incurred by the Scuola in its building and decorative program is in the Museo Correr. There is also a payment receipt to a gilder for the frames of the same three paintings on September 14,1567 (Archivio di Stato, Venice, Scuola Grande di San Rocco, II consegna, 423, Ricevute, II, f. 18V). Pal lucchini and Rossi, p. 193.

44 Marco Boschini, La carta del navegar pitaresco [Venice, 1660], ed. A. Pallucchini, Venice, 1966, pp. 105-112; the statement of the respec tive locations is on p. 111. An acute and eloquent observer, Boschini was at pains to correct Ridolfi's mistakes in subject identifications.

45 Baldassare di Monconys, 1664, quoted in R. Tursi, "La chiesa e la Scuola di San Rocco nelle descrizioni dei viaggiatori stranieri", in Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venezia, ne! VI Centenario délia Morte del Santo Patrono, 1327-1927, Venice, 1927, p. 72.

46 Antonio Maria Zanetti, Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia e isole circonvicine, o sia, rinnovazione delle ricche minere di Marco Boschini, colla aggiunta di tutte le opere che usci rono dal 1674, fino al presente 1733 [Venice, 1733], Bologna, 1980, pp. 301-302, describes Roch Healing Animals "in mezzaluna della parte dell'Epistola", with Roch Healing Plague Victims below; on the opposite wall, the Arrest of Roch above the Death of Roch. The epistle side of a church is that to the right when facing the altar. Ruskin describes the same arrangement in 1853 [interpolations in brackets are mine, with modern titles]: "San Rocco in the hospital (on the right-hand side of the altar) [...] a Cattle piece [Roch Healing Animals] (above the picture last described) [...] a noble landscape with cattle and figures [...] Finding of the body of San Rocco [Death of Roch] (on the left-hand side of the altar) [...] San Rocco in Campo d'Armata [A/resf of Roch] [...] a wild group of horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and flight ever painted by man": J. Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, New York, 1899, vol. 3 [1st pub. 1853], pp. 337-339.

47 Wiel 2000, p. 77: "sulla párete verso la sacrestia, a sinistra guardando faltare, San Rocco visita gli appestati, in basso, e la Cattura in alto; sulla párete opposta, in basso San Rocco in carcere e in alto San Rocco benedice gli animali"', eadem 2006, p. 144; Wiel et al. 2009, pp. 62-63. However, in an email communication of October 2010, the author has

recognised that this reconstruction is incorrect and will be amended in subsequent printings of the church guidebook.

48 The 1567 resolution indicated that the three paintings still not completed were the two at the upper level and one at the lower level, opposite the already completed canvas of 1549 (above n. 42). When Vasari was in Venice in 1566, only this first painting would have been on view. The specificity of Vasari's description of the healing miracle ("una prospetti va come d'uno spedale pieno di letta e d'infermi in varie attitudini, i quali sono medicati da Santo Rocco [...]") suggests a first-hand account and plausibly identifies this picture as the first to be completed in 1549: Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 158. Since the sacristy is on the left side of the church, Coletti interpreted the wording of the 1567 payment record ("l'uno della banda della Sagrestia et l'altro dall'altra banda di sopra") as referring to the canvases of the lower left and upper right walls. Further confirmation that the Death of Roch was one of those com

pleted in 1567 has been found in Vasari's briefer reference to another Tintoretto canvas in the choir, presumed to have been derived from reports sent to him in late 1567. The description is not unapt for the Death of St Roch ("piena di molto belle e graziose figure, e insomma tale, ch'ell'è tenuta delle migliori opere che abbia fatto questo pittore"), although it is hardly a definitive identification: Pallucchini and Rossi, pp. 192-193.

49 Added by Santo Piatti in 1729, following the rebuilding of the nave: Wiel 2000, p. 77. When and why this rearrangement occurred is unknown, although Ruskin's comments indicate it must have taken place after 1853.

50 Grabski 1980, for the Sala Terrena of the Scuola; for laterals for sacra ment confraternities, M. Matile, "Quadri laterali, owero conseguenze di una collocazione ingrata. Sui dipinti di storie sacre di Jacopo Tintoret to", Venezia Cinquecento, 6, 1996, pp. 151-206; cf. Ilchman, in Falomir 2007, pp. 71-74.

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Louise Marshall

51 Above, n. 48.

52 Palluchini and Rossi, pp. 92-93, 220, cat. 415, summarise earlier opin ions and date the picture circa 1580-1585. This is also the judgement of the most authoritative recent re-evaluation of Tintoretto's œuvre, by R. Echols and F. Ilchman, "Toward a New Tintoretto Catalogue, with a Checklist of Revised Attributions and a New Chronology", in Jaco po Tintoretto, Actas del Congreso Internacional Jacopo Tintoretto, ed. M. Falomir, Madrid, 2009, p. 134, cat. 282: "1580s. Possibly Jacopo design; Jacopo and studio execution".

53 R. Echols, "Tintoretto the Painter", in Falomir 2007, pp. 55-62, who concludes that "It is virtually impossible to date Tintoretto's works on the basis of style alone with any security [...]. Any attempts to date Tintoretto's paintings on stylistic grounds must therefore be considered to be speculative and approximate". See also Echols and Ilchman 2009, pp. 91-150.

54 F. Mason Rinaldi, in Venezia e la peste, 134811797, exh. cat., Venice, 1979, p. 243, cat. A16: "È la prima volta a Venezia, se non in assoluto, che viene rappresentata I'azione del santo in un lazaretto"; Masslmi, p. 65: "Col San Rocco nell'ospedale Tintoretto inaugura un'iconografia completamente inédita [...]. Tintoretto di fatto crea un soggetto nuovo di zecca [...]"; Wiel etal. 2009, p. 61.

55 L. Marshall, "A New Plague Saint for Renaissance Italy: Suffering and Sanctity in Narrative Cycles of Saint Roch", in Crossing Cultures: Con flict, Migration, Convergence. Acts of the 32nd Congress of the Interna tional Committee of the History of Art, ed. J. Anderson, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 543-549.

56 A. Moschetti, "La Scuola di San Rocco in Padova e i suoi recenti res tauri", Padova. Rivista comunale dell'attività cittadina, 1, 1930, pp. 1-59; V. Mancini, "L'Oratorio di San Rocco a Padova", in San Rocco nell'arte, Milan, 2000, pp. 96-99.

57 London, British Museum, inv. 1860,0414.140. See D. Rosand and M. Muraro, Titian and the Venetian Woodcut, exh. cat., Washington, 1976, cat. 12; Venezia e la peste, pp. 240-241, cat. A14; Rosand 1997, pp. 35-37; L. Pon, "A Document for Titian's St Roch", Print Quarterly, 19, 2002, pp. 275-257; and M. Wivel, "Colour in Line: Titian and Printmaking", PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2010. I am indebted to Matthias Wivel for illuminating discussion of this print, particularly in regard to questions of style, dating and technique, and for kindly sending me sections of his dissertation. More problematic is the current cover of the reliquary casket of St Roch, painted with three narratives of Roch's life. Traditionally attributed to Andrea Schiavone (G. Nicoletti, lllustrazione della chiesa e Scuola di San Rocco in Venezia [Monumenti Storici della R. Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, ser. 4], Venice, 1885, p. 20), the panel was not included in Richardson's monograph (F. L. Richardson, Andrea Schiavone, Oxford, 1980). Two of the three narratives on the cover (Arrest, Roch in Prison Visited by an Angel, Funeral) are the same as those painted by Tintoretto, and there are certain formal parallels, but in the absence of documents, the uncertain attribution and dating make it difficult to determine whether the cover precedes or postdates Tintoretto's canvases.

58 Many cycles begin with either Roch's birth or vocation - his spiritual rebirth - when he donates all his property to the poor and sets out on pilgrimage to Rome. At Berzo Interiore (Lombardy, 1504), for example, five episodes plot Roch's life from cradle to grave, with intervening scenes of healing, intercession and his discovery in the wilderness. Directly comparable cycles of four scenes include Brossasco (Pied mont, 1530), which opens with Roch's departure on pilgrimage, fol

lowed by the saint healing victims and discovered in the wilderness and ending with the recovery of his body by his relatives. Another abbrevi ated cycle, at Almenno San Salvatore (Lombardy, 1515), devotes two scenes to Roch in the wilderness, includes his cure of plague victims and closes with his Arrest. For further analysis of these earlier cycles, see Marshall, 2009. The only exception is the wooden tomb cover of San Rocco (see previous note), which is thus either a significant prec edent and model for the choir scheme, or a later recapitulation under the influence of Tintoretto's works.

59 That visitors were permitted to enter the choir is indicated by the con fraternity's decision in 1527 to install a new door in the back right wall of the cappella maggiore, in order to reduce crowd congestion, which was noted as particularly severe on Fridays and festivals. Worshippers were thus allowed, at least at certain times, to move through the choir and exit the church by the new door, which opens directly onto a narrow lane running along the right-hand side of the church and debouching back into the campo San Rocco. See Teseo, fig. 4 (1774 plan of area, showing the lane), p. 143; Weil 2000, p. 74; the decision is quoted in full by Tonon 2003, p. 22.

60 For the ubiquity of this scene in earlier cycles, see Marshall 2009, pp. 455-457.

61 Retained when the original façade was demolished and now displayed in the portico of the Scuola; the dog is a later addition. Wiel 2000, pp. 69, 79 n. 43.

62 The two black dots visible on Roch's chest are perhaps best under stood as clumsy or overpainted evocations of chest anatomy, even specifically as nipples (cf., for example, the figure of Roch in the Albergo ceiling), since they are on the outside of his pink skin-tight tunic, and thus do not represent plague buboes or other signs of disease on the skin. Roch's bubo is always only ever located on his upper right or left thigh, a suitably decorous transposition of a lymphatic swelling charac teristically occurring in the groin. The canvas is documented as being damaged and repaired in the seventeenth century and is now in poor condition: Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 193, cat. 301; llchman and Echols, p. 125, cat. 133, who comment that "damage makes it difficult to judge the extent of studio involvement".

63 Dated on the basis of style to the 1580s. The landscape is recognised as the work of Paolo Fiammingo, who is known to have worked in Tintoretto's shop around this date. Pallucchini and Rossi, pp. 81, 218, cat. 407; llchman and Echols 2009, p. 134, cat. 281, classify It as studio execution, with the landscape by Paolo Fiammingo and the figure of the saint painted by an assistant after Jacopo's design.

64 See Nichols 1999, figs. 132 (St Roch In Glory, Albergo ceiling, 1564) and 157 (St Roch, Sala Superiore, 1578/80).

65 On these biographical cycles, see R Humfrey, "The Bellinesque Life of St Mark for the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice In Its Original Arrangement", Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 48, 1985, pp. 225-242; and P Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio, New Haven, 1988.

66 Pulían 1971, pp. 219-222, 244-252, 296-297, 315-322; A. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Fifteenth-Century Florence, Cambridge, 1986; B. Pulían, "Plague and Perceptions of the Poor in Early Modern Italy", In Epidemics and Ideas. Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, ed. by T. Ranger and R Slack, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 101-123.

67 Acquapendente was Roch's first and hence most famous cure, to which Diedo devotes the most detail, but he also records Roch healing suffer ers in Cesena, Rome and other unnamed towns before he was infected

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in Piacenza: Diedo/Bolle [f. 7V—11 ], pp. 6-8. Other early vite further amplify Roch's curative itinerary. Only one of the ten cycles known to me does not Include Roch healing plague victims; several include mul tiple curative miracles. For example, San Rocco, Volano (Trentino, 1525) includes three separate instances of Roch healing the plague-stricken at Aquapendente, Cesena and Rimini. Not coincidentally, the church was attached to a civic hospital. See R. Adami and S. Ferrari, Templum Sancti Rochi. Le vicende storico-artistiche della chiesa di San Rocco

e della comunità di Volano fra il XV e il XVI secolo, Calliano, 1992; Mar shall 2009, p. 455.

68 The term is llchman's, in Falomir 2007, pp. 66-67, 245.

69 For the organization, architecture and personnel of Renaissance hos pitals, see J. Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul, New Haven, 2006, esp. pp. 147-224. For Venetian hospitals, see Pulían 1971, pp. 196-215, 423-428; Venezia e la peste, pp. 99-112, 157-192, 343-362.

70 Henderson, pp. 85-86.

71 For confraternal charity, see above, n. 36.

72 Their housing, salaries and duties are set out in chapter 26 of the Mariegole minore: Tonon 1998, pp. 75-76. Massimi 1995, pp. 56ff., interprets this picture as a specific polemic on the part of the Scuola in favour of converting their original residence to a members' hospital, a move blocked by the Franciscans on whose land the Scuoletta was built. However, this argument is based on the incorrect assumption that Tintoretto's painting is an iconographie unicum and overemphasises the hospital setting, common to many earlier versions of this subject, at the expense of the healing miracle of the saint and its significance for commissioners and visitors alike. This reading also ignores the clarion call of the plague buboes to viewers throughout the picture, and the fact that the projected hospital - never achieved, due to the opposition of the friars - was intended for the use of impoverished, elderly or sick members, not plague victims (who if not cared for in their homes by relatives or the nurses engaged by the Scuola should have been con signed to the plague lazaretto).

73 For this understanding of buboes, see Carmichael, pp. 79-80.

74 On the issue of clothing to patients on arrival at the hospital, see Hend erson, pp. 162-164. As he observes, this was a significant induction ritual that "symbolised leaving behind everyday life and entering a new environment dedicated to the cure of the body and the spirit" (p. 164).

75 Pulían 1971, pp. 239ff.; T. Nichols, "Paragons of Poverty: Imagery of the Deserving Poor in the Age of Reformation and Counter-Reforma tion", in II Rinascimento italiano di fronte all riforma: letteratura e arte, ed. C. Damianaki et al., Rome, 2005, pp. 253-269; idem, "Images of Almsgiving and Poverty in Venetian Art of the Sixteenth Century", in Armut und Armenfürsorge in der italienischen Stadtkultur zwischen 13. und 16. Jahrhundert, ed. G. Wolf and R Helas, Frankfurt, 2006, pp. 349-370; idem, "Secular Charity, Sacred Poverty: Picturing the Poor in Renaissance Venice", Art History, 30, 2007, pp. 139-169; cf. R Cottrell, "Poor Substitutes: Imaging Disease and Vagrancy in Renaissance Ven ice", in Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe. Picturing the Social Margins, ed. T. Nichols, Aldershot, 2007, pp. 63-87.

76 Characteristics of Tintoretto's handling of narrative noted by Echols, in Falomir 2007, pp. 39-40; and llchman, ibid., pp. 77-83.

77 Diedo/Bolle [f. 6r-8v], p. 6.

78 At Berzo Interiore (1504), a dog stands next to the saint as he performs his cures.

79 On the identification of this painting as a plague miracle, see L. Mar shall, "La costruzione di un santo contro la peste: il caso di Nicola da Tolentino", in San Nicola da Tolentino nell'arte. Corpus iconográfico, 1 : Dalle origini at Concilio di Trento, ed. V. Pace and R. Tollo, Milan, 2005, pp. 92-96, with further bibliography.

80 Diedo/Bolle [f. 15], p. 10. It occurs in only one earlier cycle, at Bagolino (Lombardy, 1483-1486).

81 Diedo/Bolle [ff. 16V-17], p. 11.

82 It appears in five out of the ten monumental cycles known to me.

83 As pointed out to me by Louise Bourdua, this dramatic detail recalls the similar fall in Altichiero's late fourteenth-century frescoes in the St James Chapel of the Santo in nearby Padua, either directly or through their common antique source in the column of Trajan.

84 Diedo/Bolle [f. 17"], 11. Roch's confession is represented at Bagolino (Marshall 2009, fig. 2) and Crana. For further discussion of the ways in which the events leading up to and following Roch's death were usu ally depicted, see Marshall 2009, pp. 454-455. Pulían 1971, pp. 44-49, has noted the very small proportion of priests in the membership of Venetian scuole in general and San Rocco specifically, which from the 1490s to 1538 admitted only 1 priest for 70 laymen. He draws attention to the parallel exclusion of priests from the government of the city as from that of the scuole, and stresses the San Rocco chaplain's "posi tion of subjection to the governors of San Rocco", particularly evident in a document of 1536 setting out his duties and requiring obedience to the confraternity executive in all things.

85 Shown in four earlier cycles, including Berzo Interiore, 1504 (Marshall 2009, fig. 1).

88 Unfamiliarity with the biography of the saint has meant that Roch is sometimes thought to be dying of the plague, a mistake made by Carlo Ridolfi in his life of Tintoretto (Ridolfi/Enggass and Enggass, p. 29) which still echoes in Pallucchini and Rossi, p. 76, who describe the action as an angel sent by God to comfort the sick saint.

87 Diedo/Bolle [ff. 17V-18V], pp. 11-12.

88 Pulían 1971, pp. 75-76; Tonon 2003, pp. 87-90.

89 Tonon 1999, pp. 18-19, 45.

90 Massimi, pp. 39-46. David Rosand has suggested that several of the witnesses at the Crucifixion, painted for the San Rocco Albergo two years earlier, in 1565, are confraternal portraits, including that of the supervising Guardian Grando, Girolamo Rota, whose name is inscribed along with that of the artist on a fictive cartouche in the lower left corner: Rosand 1997, p. 149.

91 For the duties and significance of these offices, see Tonon 1998, pp. 51 ff.; Massimi, passim.

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A Plague Saint for Venice: Tintoretto at the Chiesa di San Rocco, 2012

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