The chapel in which it was to hang housed relics of the saint sent to Antwerp by the Jesuits during an earlier plague there in 1626 in the hope of spreading her cult beyond Sicily via major trading cities in the Spanish Netherlands.

[4] They also tried to spread her cult from their church in Ypres, for which they commissioned Gaspar de Crayer's Coronation of Saint Rosalia (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent) in 1644, a work heavily influences by Paulus Pontius's print of van Dyck's version of the subject.

[4] The Jesuit Giordano Cascini had produced in 1627 the saint's first hagiography entitled Vitae Sanctae Rosaliae, Virginis Panormitanae e tabulis, situ ac vetustate obsitis e saxis ex antris e rudieribus caeca olim oblivione consepultis et nuper in lucem.

[4] Van Dyck had started making drawings of the saint for the engravings that were included in the Vita S.Rosaliae Virginis Panormitanae Pestis patronae iconibus expressa, published by Cornelis Galle the Elder in Antwerp in 1629.

[10] The skull, lily and roses are all typical attributes of Saint Rosalia, with the last two not only shown woven into the crown but also carried in the basket of the figure at the extreme right of the painting (probably quoting Titian's c. 1550 Prado Salome) and held by the cherubs in the top right-hand corner.