Giorgio Vasari's "San Rocco Altarpiece": Tradition and Innovation in Plague Iconography

Giorgio Vasari's St. Roch Altar, 1535—1537, had a learned program that far exceeded the expectations of most devotional commissions. The main panel depicts God the Father sending disease into the world; the three predella panels, recounting the story of the Davidian Plague, provide a commentary on the central theme. Created during the decades that characterized the hiatus between the late medieval tradition, which developed in the aftermath of the Black Death, and the rise of the more restrictive Tridentine era, it belongs to a select group of masterpieces that reflects not only iconographic changes but also the adjustments of the Church's attitude toward epidemic disease. For his creation, Vasari consulted numerous, and sometimes seemingly dichotomous sources, such as Scripture along with classical texts and antique imagery. Contrary to earlier plague votives that stressed the merit of human suffering,the Aretine altar implied an aspiring message, quoting a historic example which promised the faithful that God would reward their hardships with a more auspicious future.