Saint Roch Giving Alms

Painting by Annibale Carracci

Saint Roch Giving Alms is an oil on canvas painting by Annibale Carraci, commissioned between 1587 and 1588 by the Confraternity of San Rocco in Reggio Emilia, a body for whom he produced several works. His largest work on panel or canvas (as opposed to fresco), it is the crowning achievement of his career before his move to Rome.^[1] Only completed in 1595, it is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany.

History

The commission is dated by an 8 July 1595 letter to the commissioners from the artist stating it had been commissioned "seven years earlier"^[2] and came at almost exactly the same time as the commission for an Assumption of the Virgin altarpiece, now also in Dresden.^[3] It was intended for one of the long walls of the Confraternity's oratory, now destroyed, facing Saint Roch Healing Plague Victims, a c.1585 painting by Camillo Procaccini in an identical format, destroyed in the bombing of Dresden.

Analysis

Reception

Gallery

Domenichino, Saint Cecilia Giving Alms, 1612–15, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome
Frans Francken II, Seven Works of Charity, 1605, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
Guido Reni or Francesco Brizio, Saint Roch Giving Alms, print after the painting

References

^ (in Italian)Claudio Strinati, Annibale Carracci, Firenze, 2002, p. 29.
^ Archivio delle Opere Pie di Reggio Emilia
^ Catalogue entry - Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Annibale Carracci

Paintings

List of paintings
The Laughing Youth (1580s)
The Beaneater (1580–1590)
Butcher's Shop (1583)
Crucifixion with Saints (1583)
Corpse of Christ (1583–1585)
An Allegory of Truth and Time (1584–1585)
Baptism of Christ (1585)
Pietà with Saints Clare, Francis and Mary Magdalene (1585)
The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine (c. 1585)
The Vision of Saint Eustace (1585–1586)
Two Children Teasing a Cat (1587–1588)
Madonna and Child with Saints (1588)
Venus with a Satyr and Two Cupids (1588–1590)
Lamentation (1587–1590)
Self-Portrait in Profile (1590s)
Assumption of the Virgin (Madrid; 1590)
The Virgin Appears to Saint Luke and Saint Catherine (1592)
Self-Portrait (1593)
Madonna and Child with Saints (1593)
Resurrection (1593)
Madonna and Child in Glory over the City of Bologna (c. 1593)
Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1593–1594)
Saint Roch Giving Alms (1587–1595)
Fishing (before 1595)
Hunting (before 1595)
River Landscape (c. 1590)
Christ and the Canaanite Woman (1594–1595)
Entombment of Christ (c. 1595)
Venus, Adonis and Cupid (c. 1595)
Camerino Farnese
- The Choice of Hercules (1596)
Christ in Glory with Saints and Odoardo Farnese (c. 1597–1598)
The Death of Saint Francis (1597–1598)
Saint Margaret of Antioch (1599)
Christ Appearing to Saint Anthony Abbot (1598–1600)
Christ Crowned with Thorns (1598–1600)
Christ Crowned with Thorns (Bologna) (c. 1598–1600)
The Madonna and Sleeping Child with the Infant St John the Baptist (c. 1599–1600)
Pietà (c. 1600)
The Three Marys at the Tomb (c. 1600)
Rinaldo and Armida (c. 1601)
Assumption of the Virgin (Rome; 1600–1601)
Saint Gregory at Prayer (c. 1600–1602)
Domine quo vadis? (c. 1602)
Portable Altarpiece with Pietà and Saints (1603)
Pietà with Two Angels (c. 1603)
Sleeping Venus (c. 1603)
Self-Portrait on an Easel (1603–1604)
The Martyrdom of St Stephen (c. 1603–1604)
Portrait of Monsignor Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1604) (disputed)
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
The Dead Christ Mourned (c. 1604)
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1604)
Danaë (1600–1605)
Saint Didacus of Alcalá Presenting Juan de Herrera's Son to Christ (c. 1606)
Pietà with Saint Francis and Saint Mary Magdalene (1602–1607)
The Loves of the Gods (1608)
The Birth of the Virgin (1605–1609)