Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague-stricken of Palermo

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.

The physical object — Oil on canvas, 39 1/4 x 29 in. (99.7 x 73.7 cm) — carries its own history of handling and restoration. Anthony van Dyck's brushwork here moves between exacting description and looser, more suggestive passages, a balance typical of Baroque studio practice.

Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. The iconography draws on scripture and classical myth, but the emotional weight is entirely human.

Today the painting is held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it remains a touchstone for understanding Anthony van Dyck's contribution to Western art. It has been studied, copied, restored, and argued over for centuries — proof that great paintings keep generating new readings long after their creators have gone.

“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”