Saint Rosalie in Glory

Van Dyck came to Palermo in 1624 as a young Flemish star, hired to paint the Spanish viceroy of Sicily. Then the plague arrived. It killed tens of thousands across the island, the viceroy among them, and kept Van Dyck shut inside the quarantined city until the autumn of 1625. That same summer, diggers in the mountains above Palermo found bones said to be those of Rosalie, a medieval noblewoman who had left the city to live as a hermit. People believed her relics could hold back the sickness, and Palermo seized on her. Van Dyck painted her over and over in those months. In this one angels lift her toward the light while, by every account, the plague still ran through the streets below.