Scuola Grande di San Rocco

The Scuola Grande di San Rocco stands in Campo San Rocco, in the San Polo district of Venice, in the Veneto region of Italy. It began as a lay confraternity of Venetian citizens in the late fifteenth century, founded to help the city during outbreaks of plague. Scuole were religious lay brotherhoods that played a major role in Venetian social life, and the scuole grande, those with more than five hundred members, were the most important of them. In 1485 the brotherhood obtained the relics of Saint Roch, to whom the neighbouring church is dedicated, which drew worshippers and resources and strengthened its charitable work. The building was raised through the sixteenth century under a succession of architects.

Its reputation rests above all on the paintings, commissioned from Tintoretto, whose cycle occupied more than twenty years. He first won the commission by presenting a finished canvas for the Sala dell'Albergo, and went on to decorate the Sala Grande and the Sala Inferior. His works combine drama, strong contrasts of light and bold foreshortening. Among them stand St. Roch in Glory, the ceiling of the Sala dell'Albergo, and The Crucifixion, the most monumental canvas in the ensemble, some twelve metres wide. Other works in the building include a Christ Carrying the Cross by Titian, an Annunciation by the same painter, and canvases by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo such as Abraham Praying before the Three Angels and Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert. On the staircases, Antonio Zanchi painted the Virgin appearing to the plague-stricken.