St. Roche
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Authors
Unknown artists
Date
Type
still image
Language
Keyword
San Rocco , dog , plague
Alternative Title
Abstract
This painted wood statue of St. Roche (patron saint of foreigners, as well as of those suffering from the plague) was commission by the confraternity of St. Roche in Rieti in the early sixteenth century for their chapel in the Cathedral of Rieti, where it still stands, though the chapel has been since redecorated. The confraternity was founded by Lombard masons living and working in Rieti. It was common for groups of foreigners to form their own guilds and confraternities in order to take care of their own community, in this gathering money to support ill masons and to decorate their chapel. They gained the rights to the chapel in 1503, with the stipulation that they construct the chapel and decorate it within three years. The statue remains from the that original early sixteenth-century commission, but the rest of the decoration of the chapel does not survive. St. Rocco no longer has his dog (visible in early photographs of the chapel), which must have disappeared, perhaps stolen, in the early twentieth century. Likewise, a painting the originally accompanied the sculpture has been lost. The local historian, Angelo Sacchetti Sassetti (d. 1968) lamented the loss of this painting and the whitewashing of the chapel. to make it appear like marble. A conservation campaign by Cecilia Gugliandolo and Ihab Samy Nasseralla in 2005-2006 revealed the original colors of the stucco decorations of the chapel and some of the 17th C paintings. It is not clear whether the statue itself was painted while as well and if it has undergone recent conservation. The painted surface now looks as if may have been applied in the seventeenth century when the chapel was remodelled. St. Roche lifts his skirts and folds down his splendid red stocking to reveal a plague wound in his leg. He is otherwise in the peak of health and rather elegantly dressed. Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Description
Cathedral, Rieti
Citation
https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/1200010525 (as a comparison to a statue of S. Rocco from the same time period in Leonessa); https://cattedrale.chiesadirieti.it/arte-e-storia/la-cappella-di-san-rocco/