Apparition of the Angel to St. Roch
AUTHOR
Gaspar Dias (ca.1515-ca.1591)
PLACE/DATE
Portugal, ca. 1584
MATERIALS
Oil on wood
DIMENSIONS
350 x 300 cm
INV
PIN.63
The scene depicted evokes St. Roch’s pilgrimage through Piacenza, coming into contact with the pestiferous people gathered in the town's hospitals, and the vision of the angel that appeared to him one night while he was resting, warning him of the evil that would befall him, identical to that of those he had cured.
Executed for the altarpiece of the chapel of St. Roch, in the Church of São Roque, this work consecrated the painter Gaspar Dias in the context of Portuguese painting of the second half of the 16th century. It stands out for the quality of execution, naturalness and elegance of the main characters of the composition, as well as for the architectural perspective with a classicising atmosphere adopted as a backdrop and recreated from a drawing by the Flemish painter Hans Vredemann de Vries (1527-ca.1607), of 1560, which imaginatively reconstitutes Solomon's Temple.
