Saint Roch, Souabe XVI siecle

Sculpture representing Saint Roch, the angel and the dog.
Souabedie work, beginning of the XVI century in limewood.
Saint Roch was born in Montepellier in the XIV century. Piligrim, he is the patron Saint of the surgeons, dermatologists and apothecaries.
According to the legend, Roch cured the plague victims and caught the disease himself.
To avoid infesting others, he isolated himself and retired to a forest near to Piacenza. He lets himself die but an angel appears to him and consoles him. A spring gushes out of the ground and soothes his fever.
A dog coming from a manor inhabitated by a lord named Gothard Palastrelli brought him a loaf of bread. This explains the presence of a dog in the representations.
He died in Lombardy, in Voghera.
Canonised by Pope Urban VIII en 1629.
Our sculpture came from a private Collection in Paris. It was acquired in 1952 in Cologne, in Germany.