Wallace Collection Online

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Carlo Crivelli (1430 - 1495) Saint Roch Italy: Date: c. 1480

Object Type: Painting

Medium: Tempera and oil on limewood panel

Object size: 40 x 12.1 cm
Image size: 38.7 x 11.1 cm, painted area
Frame size: 60 x 27.5 x 6.5 cm

Inv: P527

Location: Sixteenth Century Gallery

Saint Roch (1293-1327) was born into a rich family in Montpellier, but gave away his inheritance and embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome. Along the way he comforted victims of the plague, contracting the disease himself which resulted in a sore on his thigh. The Black Death ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century and Saint Roch became established as a protector of the sick. The Wallace Collection’s picture is one of the earliest representations of the saint, who became a favoured subject both as a devotional figure and as an intercessor with the Virgin on behalf of those hoping to be spared infection (cf. Cima P1). He is identified by his wound and by his pilgrim’s hat, cloak and staff. The picture is dateable c.1480, or a little later, and may have formed a pendant to a figure of Saint Sebastian (Milan, Poldi Pezzoli Museum) in a polyptych.

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