DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68745#0102
CHAPTER VI
GREAT UNDERTAKINGS
THE year before the ‘Marriage of Cana’ was painted,
Tintoretto had been deputed to the great work that
henceforward was to fill so large a place in his life.
Venice in the Middle Ages, owing to her constant intercourse
with the East, had been particularly liable to attacks of plague,
so that supernatural protection became a special object with the
Venetians, and the acquisition of the relics of such a powerful
patron as San Rocco was an event of the last importance. San
Rocco, St. Roche, or S. Roch, born in 1290, was the son of
a rich seigneur of Montpelier, in France. His parents died
when he was twenty, and he inherited their property. The law
would not allow him to sell it, but being very devout, and wish-
ing to obey literally Christ’s command to embrace poverty, he
gave away all he could, and appointing an uncle administrator
of his estates, he started on a pilgrimage to Rome. Halting at
Acquapendente, he found that the plague had broken out there,
and he offered his services to the hospital. From there he went
on to Cesena and Rimini, the plague seeming to disappear
before his ministrations. He eventually arrived in Rome, where
he remained for three years, and then returned by the same way,
everywhere devoting himself to the care of the sick, and especially
of the plague-stricken.
One night at Piacenza, he found that he himself was
seized by the complaint, and so afraid was he of disturbing his
fellow-patients by the cries he could not restrain, that he paid
a man to carry him into the open air. When morning came
he had dragged himself to a little hut in a wood, where a man
called Gotthard found and nursed him, till at length, owing
perhaps to the fresh air after the pestilential surroundings of the
52
GREAT UNDERTAKINGS
THE year before the ‘Marriage of Cana’ was painted,
Tintoretto had been deputed to the great work that
henceforward was to fill so large a place in his life.
Venice in the Middle Ages, owing to her constant intercourse
with the East, had been particularly liable to attacks of plague,
so that supernatural protection became a special object with the
Venetians, and the acquisition of the relics of such a powerful
patron as San Rocco was an event of the last importance. San
Rocco, St. Roche, or S. Roch, born in 1290, was the son of
a rich seigneur of Montpelier, in France. His parents died
when he was twenty, and he inherited their property. The law
would not allow him to sell it, but being very devout, and wish-
ing to obey literally Christ’s command to embrace poverty, he
gave away all he could, and appointing an uncle administrator
of his estates, he started on a pilgrimage to Rome. Halting at
Acquapendente, he found that the plague had broken out there,
and he offered his services to the hospital. From there he went
on to Cesena and Rimini, the plague seeming to disappear
before his ministrations. He eventually arrived in Rome, where
he remained for three years, and then returned by the same way,
everywhere devoting himself to the care of the sick, and especially
of the plague-stricken.
One night at Piacenza, he found that he himself was
seized by the complaint, and so afraid was he of disturbing his
fellow-patients by the cries he could not restrain, that he paid
a man to carry him into the open air. When morning came
he had dragged himself to a little hut in a wood, where a man
called Gotthard found and nursed him, till at length, owing
perhaps to the fresh air after the pestilential surroundings of the
52