San Marco in trono

Venice was in the grip of plague around 1510, the same outbreak that killed the young painter Giorgione, when Titian, barely into his twenties, made this altarpiece as a plea for it to end. Saint Mark, the city's patron, sits high on a throne, his face half in shadow. The four saints below are all plague saints: the healing brothers Cosmas and Damian on one side, and on the other Roch lifting his robe to show the sore on his thigh, next to Sebastian pierced with arrows, since arrows had long stood for a plague that struck without warning. Titian painted it for a church out on an island, Santo Spirito. It only reached its present home, the great sacristy of the Salute, in 1656, after another and far worse plague.