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A man in robes and a cloak sits on a rock beside a wooden fence

A young bearded man with shoulder length hair wears a pensive expression while he sits astride a rock. He raises his robes, showing an open sore on his right thigh. He wears a shoulder cape with a red cross on the shoulder. Resting in his arm is a staff with a tattered white cloth at the top. He sits beside a ramshackle wooden fence, and a black and white spotted dog lies on the ground at his feet. In the distance is a city is at the foot of a mountain, and a faint shaft of light shines on the man from clouds in the sky above.

Gallery Text

Tiepolo was one of the most renowned artists in eighteenth-century Venice. Influenced by Venetian Renaissance painters such as Tintoretto and Veronese, he composed numerous religious and mythological scenes, achieving notoriety for his paintings’ vivid color and theatrical effects. In this small canvas, made for private devotion, he depicts Saint Roch, the medieval French nobleman who, according to hagiographic accounts, miraculously healed plague victims while a mendicant pilgrim in Italy. In Tiepolo’s painting, the saint, who has now contracted the disease himself, sits against a tattered fence, lifting his cloak to display the plague wounds on his upper thigh. He is joined by a dog, which would later heal his sores by licking them. Saint Roch was popular in Venice because its residents often fell victim to plague and other diseases. During the Renaissance, his body was purportedly transferred to the city, where a church and hospital were dedicated to him.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
1943.123
People
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Italian (Venice, Italy 1696 - 1770 Madrid, Spain)
Title
Saint Roch as a Pilgrim
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1730
Places
Creation Place: Europe, Italy, Veneto, Venice
Culture
Italian
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/230281

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2220, European and American Art, 17th–19th century, Rococo and Neoclassicism in the Eighteenth Century
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
46.3 x 32.2 cm (18 1/4 x 12 11/16 in.)
framed: 60 x 46 cm (23 5/8 x 18 1/8 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Count Mapelli, Bergamo. Grenville Lindall Winthrop, New York, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
Accession Year
1943
Object Number
1943.123
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings of G. B. Tiepolo: Including Pictures by His Pupils and Followers Wrongly Attributed to Him, checklist, Phaidon Press Limited (London, 1962), p. 8, repr. as fig. 159
  • Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1972), p. 196
  • Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990)

Exhibition History

  • Venice in the Eighteenth Century, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 05/05/1948 - 06/10/1948
  • 32Q: 2220 18th-19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050

Subjects and Contexts

  • Google Art Project

Verification Level

This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu