Jacopo Tintoretto, St. Roch Summoned to Heaven

1549
Oil on canvas
Church of St. Roch, Venice

Diedo's Vita S. Rochi (Acta Sanctorum, August vol. 3, 406) emphasizes the darkness and squalor of the prison, and Tintoretto follows suit. The prisoners' shackles and the grate over the pit may be a response to a lesson from the Mass for the saint's feast day, which says Roch was in vinculis conjectus, "put in chains" ( Analecta Bollandiana VIII [1889], 196).

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Photographed at the church by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.