St Roch in Solitude Comforted by an Angel (detail)

Paolo Fiammingo was one of the many foreigners who arrived in Venice during the second half of the sixteenth century, with a serious reputation as a landscape specialist, a field still perceived as the dominion of the northerners. Around 1580, he had been entrusted with a large area of a canvas by Jacopo Tintoretto in the church of San Rocco. In the St Roch in Solitude Comforted by an Angel, the clearly and tenderly painted background of the hut with its typical sloping roof and the little bridge over the river flowing tranquilly toward the foreground with the highly individualistic portrait of a dog is by the artist from Antwerp.