Santa Rosália Intercedendo pelos Apestados de Palermo

Van Dyck was in his mid-twenties and traveling in Sicily in 1624, in Palermo to paint a grand portrait of the Spanish viceroy, when the bubonic plague broke out. It killed tens of thousands, the viceroy among them, and trapped the young Flemish painter under quarantine on the island for months. That same summer, workers on a mountain above the city dug up bones said to be those of Rosalia, a medieval noblewoman turned hermit, and the frightened people of Palermo took her up as their protector against the plague. Van Dyck painted her at least six times. Here she kneels among cherubs, gazing up as she pleads for the dying city below. He was so short of fresh canvas that he worked her over an abandoned sketch for his own self-portrait.