St Roch in Prison Visited by an Angel

Saint Roch caught the plague himself. According to his legend he had walked through Italy nursing the sick, fell ill, recovered, and years later was thrown into prison as a suspected spy, where he died alone, comforted only by an angel. That is the moment Tintoretto paints here in 1567: the saint in the half-dark of a cell, the angel breaking in with light. Venice had good reason to keep Roch close. The city lived under the constant threat of plague, and the confraternity that commissioned this, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, guarded his relics and organised relief when outbreaks came. Tintoretto had begun a cycle on Roch's life for them back in 1549, then set it aside for nearly 20 years before returning to finish these final scenes. Eight years after he painted this, a devastating plague would sweep the city and carry off something like a third of Venice. Here that is still to come, and the angel's light falls on one dying man in a prison.