The Story
Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo is a painting of 1624 by Anthony van Dyck, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1871. The painting depicts Saint Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, interceding for the city during an outbreak of the plague. In the background can be seen the port of Palermo and Monte Pellegrino. The painting was one of six of Saint Rosalia produced in Palermo by van Dyck in the late summer of 1624 and early 1625, when the city was quarantined.
He returned to the subject in 1629 with Coronation of Saint Rosalia (Vienna) and Saint Rosalia Interceding for the City of Palermo (Ponce, Puerto Rico). The work is currently (2020) on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was an early acquisition by the institution, whose curators initially mistook it for an Assumption of the Virgin. An undated but probably autograph copy of the work is now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
Executed in Oil on canvas, measuring 39 1/4 x 29 in. (99.7 x 73.7 cm), the surface rewards close looking. Anthony van Dyck builds the composition through layered glazes and a tightly controlled palette, letting cool shadows recede so that the warm, lit passages step forward. The brushwork shifts from the precise to the almost dissolved — a hallmark of mature Baroque practice.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
