Saturday, March 28, 2020

Coronation of Saint Rosalia

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'''''Coronation of Saint Rosalia''''' or '''''Madonna and Child with Saints Rosalia, Peter and Paul''''' is a 1629 oil on canvas painting by [[Anthony van Dyck]].

It and [[:File:Anton van Dyck - The Vision of the Blessed Hermann Joseph - Google Art Project.jpg|''The Mystic Marriage of Blessed Hermann Joseph'']] (1630, with several compositional similarities to ''Coronation''<ref name=Muir>Carolyn Diskant Muir, ''Art and Religion in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp: van Dyck's "Mystic Marriage of the Blessed Hermann-Joseph"'', in ''Simiolus. Netherlands quarterly for the history of art'', Vol. 28, No. 1/2 (2000 - 2001), p. 56.</ref>) were both produced for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Celibates (''Sodaliteit van de Bejaerde Jongmans'' in Flemish) in [[Antwerp]]'s Jesuit church, Sant'Ignazio. They remained there until 1776, when archduchess [[Maria Theresa of Austria]] acquired them, taking them to Vienna, where they both now hang in the [[Kunsthistorisches Museum]]<ref>Jeffery Chipps Smith, ''The Jesuit Artistic Diaspora in Germany after 1773'', in Robert A. Maryks and Jonathan Wright (editors), ''Jesuit Survival and Restoration: A Global History'', Leida-Boston, 2015, p. 133.</ref>.

==History==
[[File:Incoronazione di santa Rosalia (da Van Dyck).jpg|thumb|left|[[Paulus Pontius]] after van Dyck, ''Coronation of Saint Rosalia'', 1629-1658]]
[[File:Incoronazione di santa Rosalia.jpg|left|thumb|The saint's first biography, ''Incoronazione di santa Rosalia tra i santi Pietro e Paolo'', una delle stampe a corredo del volume ''Vitae Sanctae Rosaliae'', written in 1627 by Giordano Cascini, a Jesuit]]
It was the last painting the artist produced of [[Saint Rosalia]] and - with ''[[Saint Rosalia Interceding for the City of Palermo]]'' (also 1629) - represented a return to a subject of whom he had produced six paintings whilst trapped in her home city of [[Palermo]] during a plague in late 1624 and early 1625. The chapel housed relics of the saint sent to the city during a plague there in 1626 in the hope of spreading her cult beyond Sicily via major trading cities in the [[Spanish Netherlands]]<ref name= Rangoni />, whilst the Jesuits also commissioned [[Gaspar de Crayer]]'s [[:File:St Rosalie de Crayer 779strosali.jpg|''Coronation of Saint Rosalia'']] ([[Museum of Fine Arts (Ghent)|Museum of Fine Arts]], Ghent) for their church in [[Ypres]] in 1644, a work heavily influence by [[Paulus Pontius]]'s print of van Dyck's version of the subject.

The Jesuits had been particularly active in promoting Saint Rosalia's cult in Sicily and beyond<ref name= Rangoni > Fiorenza Rangoni Gàl, ''Lo "Sposalizio mistico di S. Rosalia" nella chiesa del S. Salvatore a Vercana. Un problema risolto? Con alcune considerazioni sulla elaborazione dell’iconografia rosaliana di Anton van Dyck (2ª parte)'', in ''Quaderni della biblioteca del convento francescano di Dongo'', Dicembre 2013, pp. 54-63.</ref> and one of their number had produced her first [[hagiography]] in 1627, entitled ''Vitae Sanctae Rosaliae, Virginis Panormitanae e tabulis, situ ac vetustate obsitis e saxis ex antris e rudieribus caeca olim oblivione consepultis et nuper in lucem''<ref name= Rangoni />. Van Dyck was given the commission partly because he was himself a member of the Confraternity, though he did accept a fee relatively low considering his fame at the time, and partly due to his six earlier works showing the saint.

[[File:Santa Rosalia incoronata - Van Dyck.jpg|right|thumb|A 1629 drawing of Saint Rosalia in the [[British Museum]].]]
Van Dyck may have met Cascini and the other Palermo Jesuits in 1624-1625, another possible reason for the commission<ref name= Rangoni />. He was also already producing drawings of the saint for engravings in ''Vita S.Rosaliae Virginis Panormitanae Pestis patronae iconibus expressa'', published in Antwerp in 1629. Only one copy of the book survives, published by Cornelis Galle, a Flemish printer and engraver who had already produced the engravings for the Jesuits' ''Vita Beati Patris Ignatii Loyolae Religionis Societatis Iesu Fundatoris'', a biography of their founder [[Ignatius of Loyola]] published in Antwerp in 1610. These drawings by van Dyck, the resulting engravings and the painting itself all show a strong influence from the prints illustrating Cascini's 1627 biography<ref>Zirca Zaremba Filipczak, ''Van Dyck’s «Life of St. Rosalie»'', in ''The Burlington Magazine'', CXXXI, n. 1039, 1989, p. 693.</ref><ref name= Rangoni />.

==Analysis==
In both ''Coronation'' and his 1624-1625 paintings of the saint, van Dyck drew heavily on the compositions of local artists<ref>Gauvin Alexander Bailey, ''Anthony van Dyck, the Cult of Saint Rosalie, and the 1624 Plague in Palermo'', G.A. Bailey (editor), ''Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague 1500–1800'', Chicago, 2005, p. 118</ref>. It shows the Madonna and Child flanked by [[saint Peter]] and [[saint Paul]], with the Christ Child crowning Saint Rosalia, who kneels before them, literally reproducing the composition of an engraving in Cascini's ''Vitae Sanctae Rosaliae''. That engraving derived from a lost 1494 painting by [[Tommaso De Vigilia]] once in Santa Rosalia church in [[Bivona]] in western Sicily<ref>Michele Cometa, ''Descrizione e desiderio: i quadri viventi di E. T. A. Hoffmann'', Milano, 2006, p. 139</ref>.

[[File:Madonna e Bambino con santa Rosalia - Quartararo.png|right|thumb|[[Riccardo Quartararo]], ''Saint Rosalia Adoring the Madonna and Child'', circa 1506, [[Palazzo Abatellis]], Palermo]]
Rosalia's rich [[brocade]]d mantle is unprecedented in earlier Flemish art showing the saint, which had usually shown her alone in a poor [[Franciscan]]-type habit. This detail is probably also drawn from a print but may also show the influence of the earlier c.1506 oil on panel painting by [[Riccardo Quartararo]], showing Rosalia in royal clothing adorning the enthroned Madonna and Child<ref> Cesare Matranga, ''Dipinti di Antonio van Dijck e della sua scuola nel Museo Nazionale di Palermo'', in ''Bollettino d'Arte'', 1908, Anno II, Serie I, Fascicolo I, p. 14.</ref>.

However, Sicilian works did not influence the composition or style of ''Coronation'', which instead show the Venetian influence van Dyck had picked up during his time in Italy, a decisive influence on the formation of his style<ref name= Bernardini > Maria Grazia Bernardini (editor), ''Van Dyck. Riflessi italiani'' (exhibition catalogue; Milano, Palazzo Reale, 2004), Milano, 2004, p. 167.</ref>. The brightly-lit colours and the diagonal formed by the Madonna, Child and Saint Rosalia are very similar to [[Paolo Veronese]]'s ''[[Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (Veronese)|Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine]]'', clearly van Dyck's main model for ''Coronation''<ref name= Bernardini />. The skull, lily and roses are all typical attributes of Saint Rosalia, with the last two not only shown woven into the crown but also in the basket held by the figure at the extreme right of the painting (probably quoting [[Titian]]'s c.1550 Prado [[:File:Salome with the head of John the Baptist (Titian).jpg|''Salome'']]) and held by the cherubs in the top right-hand corner<ref name= Bernardini />.

== References ==
<references/>

[[category:Paintings of Saint Rosalia]]
[[category:1629 paintings]]
[[category:Paintings by Anthony van Dyck]]
[[category:Paintings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum]]


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