St. Sebastian and St. Rocco

In 1910 the first bishop of Chiavari, Monsignor Vielli, called Lodovico Pogliaghi so that he could endow the town Cathedral with a rich decoration concerning its pilasters ( the 14 major ones and the 24 minor ones), the vaults of its side aisles, its choir, its pulpit and its glass walls (1928), for which the artist carried out the preliminary cartoons representing St. Sebastian and St. Rocco. The choice of such subjects springs from the pillar, already on the spot where a miraculous apparition of the Holy Virgin took place on 2nd July 1610, portraying the Madonna with St. Sebastian and St. Rocco and raised by Chiavari inhabitants in order to avoid the plague which had troubled the town in 1493 and in 1528. A church was later built right in that place. The painter adopted the traditional iconography of the two martyrs for the decoration: St. Sebastian tied to a column and pierced by some arrows, and St. Rocco showing the plague sore on his left thigh. They both are represented inside an ornamental frame made up with two bunches of palms, symbols of martyrdom, on the top of which there is a putto. A typical characteristic of Pogliaghi's "baroque-like" style is the positioning of the two figures on a false base that gives them some disposition of volumes and makes them look like  statues. The two studies correspond to the last and final version of the preliminary cartoons, later transformed into glass walls with Professor Bolgiani's collaboration.

LP 704 - LP703
Study for the glass walls: St. Sebastian and St. Rocco
Cathedral of Chiavari, 740x270 mm