Saint Roch

Saint Roch was the saint you turned to when plague came. A pilgrim who nursed the sick through an outbreak, caught the disease himself, and lived, he became the great intercessor against epidemics, and Venice kept his cult especially close, a city that had buried tens of thousands in its plague years. Around 1733 Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted him more than once, as part of a set of small devotional canvases, all much the same size, tied to the Scuola di San Rocco, the Venetian brotherhood that carried the saint's name. These were private things, made to be prayed before rather than hung in a gallery. Of that group France keeps two, one here in Besançon and one in Strasbourg.