St Roch in the Hospital

Venice lived in real fear of plague, and in 1549 the confraternity of Saint Roch asked the young Tintoretto to paint their patron among its victims. Roch was the saint you prayed to against the disease, and here he moves through a crowded sickroom tending the stricken, a hall that looks much like the Lazzaretto, the island where Venice actually quarantined its plague sick. It is often called the first real depiction of plague in Venetian painting. Tintoretto lights the dim room with two competing sources, torchlight deep in the background and a hard shaft cutting in from the side, so the sprawled bodies seem to lurch out of the dark. This was his first job for San Rocco, and it began a tie to the place that lasted the rest of his life.