Christ Appointing Saint Roch as Patron Saint of Plague Victims

Saint Roch was the saint you prayed to when plague came, and the town of Aalst, west of Brussels, had a confraternity devoted to him. In the early 1620s they commissioned Rubens, by then the most sought-after painter in the Low Countries, to make an altarpiece for their chapel in St Martin's church. He showed Christ leaning down from heaven to name Roch the protector of plague victims, the sick gathered below, and Roch's faithful dog, who by legend brought him bread when he lay dying of the disease himself. The painting belongs to that church in Aalst, and the altar it was made for remains its home.