Saint Roch

Art Historical Context

In the late 15th century, as plagues ravaged Europe, images of Saint Roch—the patron saint of the plague—offered spiritual solace and protection. Israhel van Meckenem's engraving *Saint Roch* (c. 1490/1500) captures this devotion with striking clarity. Van Meckenem, a prolific German printmaker from the Northern Renaissance, depicts the saint in a characteristic pose: kneeling in prayer, often accompanied by an angel and a loyal dog, with a telltale bubo on his thigh symbolizing his miraculous healing from the Black Death. This work, housed in the National Gallery of Art's Rosenwald Collection...

About the Artist

Israhel van Meckenem · 1435–1503

Israhel van Meckenem (c. 1445–1503), also known as Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, was a pioneering German engraver and goldsmith based in Bocholt, near the Dutch border, renowned as the most prolific printmaker of the fifteenth century. Born into a family possibly of Dutch origin, he was the son of Israhel van Meckenem the Elder, a goldsmith who settled in Bocholt in 1457. He trained initially ...