For three centuries and more after the Black Death plague was endemic
throughout central and southern Europe, and its presence is indelibly
recorded in the productions of contemporary art. Dances of Death,
plague banners, votive and commemorative paintings, and actual
representations of plague scenes all bear silent testimony to the
abiding presence of the enemy within the gates. _Memento mori_, with
its dismal foreboding, was the appropriate motto of the age. Innocent
III in his _De Contemptu Mundi_ had said the last word on the misery
of human existence, and the shame and degradation of the human body,
polluted and polluting, long before the Black Death: but henceforward
the gloom that haunted the soul of this great successor of St. Peter
seems to diffuse itself throughout the world.
Dancing from early ages has been associated with the conception of
death. In many primitive races these dances seem to pertain to mimetic
magic, and purport to expedite the passing of the spirit of the
deceased. Both Greeks and Romans preserved dancing in their funeral
celebrations, and representations of these funeral dances have been
found in connexion with Greek and Etruscan tombs. These are commonly
a file of maidens, holding each other’s hands, and led by a youthful
male coryphaeus. Anacreon,[158] Tibullus,[159] and Vergil[160] all
depict the revelry of the dance in the land of departed souls, and joy
is the key-note of the dance. Christianity, in superseding paganism,
for better or for worse inculcated a gloomy conception of death,
as a punishment, a penalty for original sin. Recurrent epidemics
of pestilence served to transform the conception into that of an
inexorable foe revelling in the subversion of human happiness and the
futility of human affairs. The literature of the age no less than
its art bears the imprint of this conception. Petrarch has left us a
_Triumph of Death_, and Langland in his _Vision of Piers Plowman_[161]
has given us in verse a Dance of Death:
Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
Kynges and Knightes, Kaysers and Popes,
Learned and lewde: he ne let no man stande;
That he hitte even, stirred never after.
Many a lovely ladie and her lemmans of knightes
Swouned and swelte for sorwe of Death’s dyntes.
The earliest authenticated painting of the Death-dance is that which
was once to be seen in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris,
painted in A.D. 1434, but it is improbable that it was actually the
first. A closely similar theme of earlier date may still be seen in
the Campo Santo at Pisa. Vasari attributed it to Andrew Orcagna (A.D.
1329-68), but modern critics believe it to have been painted by Pisan
artists, about A.D. 1350. This fresco shows three young men following
the chase on horseback. Coming to the cell of St. Macarius, an Egyptian
anchorite, they are brought face to face with three open coffins,
in which are a skeleton and two dead bodies, reminding them of the
fleeting nature of human pleasures. This subject also is one adopted
from contemporary literature. Under the title of ‘Les trois Morts et
les trois Vifs’ it had figured in thirteenth-century verse, and is
frequently illustrated in the manuscript _Horae_ of the period. It is
suggested that this legend is the origin of the name ‘Danse macabre’,
or ‘Macaber Dance’, used often as an alternative name for the familiar
‘Dance of Death’.
[Illustration: PLATE XIII DANCE OF DEATH, AT BASLE (Face Page 135)]
It is not in Italy and not in France, but rather, as we should expect,
in Germany and Switzerland, that these Dances of Death found most
favour, as befits the countries that gave birth to Luther and shelter
to Calvin. In 1462-3 plague raged fiercely at Lübeck. In the chapel at
the east end of the Marienkirche is a much restored ‘Dance of Death’,
dated 1463, and showing the costumes of the period. It is interesting
as being considerably older than the more famous Basle Dance.
By far the most celebrated ‘Dance of Death’ was that painted in a shed
in the churchyard of the Dominican convent at Basle. It is believed
to have been painted in commemoration of a plague that occurred
during the session of the Grand Council of Basle, that lasted from
A.D. 1431 to 1443. It has been attributed on insufficient evidence to
Holbein. It was destroyed by a riotous mob in A.D. 1806, but relics
of the life-size figures, painted in oil, are still to be seen in the
Historical Museum at Basle. Engravings of it also exist that record its
characters in detail. Holbein did actually paint a ‘Dance of Death’ in
fresco on the walls of the old Whitehall Palace, which was destroyed in
the fire of A.D. 1697. It was an appropriate subject for the brush of
an artist, who himself was to die of plague (A.D. 1554). It is probably
referred to by Matthew Prior in his _Ode to the Memory of George
Villiers_:
Our term of life depends not on our deed,
Before our birth our funeral was decreed,
Nor aw’d by foresight, nor misled by chance,
Imperious death directs the ebon lance,
Peoples great Henry’s tombs, and leads up Holbein’s Dance.
Holbein was almost certainly also the author of the originals of the
Lyons ‘Dance of Death’, from which Hans Lutzenberger engraved the
woodcuts, which represent a varied assortment of characters of each and
every social order, among whom Death, in grotesque guise, plies his
grim and gruesome task.
The most casual observer cannot fail to be struck in any collection
of pictures of the Holbein School, with the number that present some
aspect or other of death. In the small picture gallery of Basle there
is a picture of two skulls and a tibia, by Ambrose Holbein: a diptych,
with the bust of a young man on one panel, and a skeleton on the other,
by Hans Holbein the Younger: another sixteenth-century diptych with a
bust of a girl on one panel, and a bust of a skeleton on the other, by
an unknown painter: and two pictures by Hans Baldung (A.D. 1475-1545),
one of Death holding a woman by the hair and pointing to a grave: the
other of Death kissing a woman before an open grave.
Plague banners, or _gonfaloni_,[162] are a characteristic product
of the Umbrian school of painting, and particularly of its Perugian
branch. It was the lot of Perugian painters to ply their art in the
midst of tribulations of every kind. Throughout the fifteenth century
their country was devastated by war, and by a succession of epidemics
of plague (in A.D. 1399, 1418, 1429, 1437, 1450, 1456, 1460-8, 1475-80
and 1486). In the face of these visitations Perugia set herself to
appeal to the mercy of Christ through the medium of her art. All her
painters scarcely sufficed to provide all the banners required for her
expiatory and triumphal processions. It was at times such as these
that the _gonfaloni_ made their appearance, raised between heaven and
earth, as though to convey to God a splendid manifestation of popular
repentance. Before the suppliant banners marched the priesthood in
their robes, behind them followed a penitent people, striking their
breasts and wailing aloud _Misericordia_. At each fresh invasion of
plague a new generation of artists, beginning with Bonfigli (A.D.
1420-96) and ending with Baroccio (A.D. 1528-1612), was called upon to
produce afresh these tributes of the popular devotion. The remedy was
well adapted to their sufferings, for these processions of penitents,
traversing the city and following banners, that displayed the
figure of the Redeemer, or the Madonna, or some other plague saint,
produced in their souls such a degree of spiritual exaltation, as made
despondency impossible. Men gazed on them as they gazed on the Brazen
Serpent that Moses set up in the wilderness. A striking banner is that
by Bonfigli, in the church of S. Fiorenzo at Perugia, painted in A.D.
1476 during an epidemic of plague. Above kneels the Madonna: before
her stands the Child in a basket of roses upheld by angels, wearing
chaplets of roses, as in most of Bonfigli’s pictures. Both Madonna and
Child are crowned. Below kneel groups of citizens, men and women, with
Sebastian and other saints, supplicating the Madonna. An angel holds a
scroll, on which is inscribed a fervid call to repentance, blended with
fierce denunciation of their sins, in these words of Lorenzo Spiriti:
‘Oh, most obstinate and wicked people—cruel, proud,
and full of all iniquity, who have placed your faith
and your desires on things, which are full of a mortal
misery, I, the angel of Heaven, am sent unto you from
God to tell you, that He will put an end to all your
wounds and weeping, your ruin and your curse through
the mediation of Mary.... Turn, turn your eyes, most
miserable mortals, to the great examples of the past
and present, to the utter miseries and heavy evils,
which Heaven sends to you because of all your sins:
your homicide and your adultery, your avarice and
luxury.... Oh miserable beings, the justice of heaven
works not in a hurry, but it punishes always, even
as men deserve.... Nineveh was a city florid and
magnificent, and Babylon was likewise, but now they
are as nothing: and Sodom and Gomorrah, behold them
now—a morass of sulphur and of fetid waters.... Oh,
therefore, be grateful and acknowledge the benefits
and graces of our Saviour, and let your souls burn
hotly with the fire of faith and charity, of hope and
faithful love.... But and if you should again grow
slothful and unwilling to renounce your errors, I
foretell a second judgement upon you, and I reckon
that it will prove more terrible, more cruel than the
first.’[163]
In banners such as this the imagination of the painter finds play for
the crowding emotions not of his own heart only, but of the hearts of
his fellow citizens as well.
Another type of plague banner is that of the ‘Madonna della
Misericordia’ in the church of S. Francesco del Prato at Perugia,
also by Bonfigli. It bears the date A.D. 1464. In the centre stands
the crowned Madonna, a majestic figure erect like a lighthouse amid
the storm, on which sufferers may fix their eyes and hope. On her
garment lie broken arrows, while beneath its ample folds kneel groups
of monks on one side, and of nuns on the other, all in attitudes of
prayer. In the upper part of the picture Christ, wearing both crown
and cruciferous nimbus, casts arrows down. At His right hand is the
angel of justice with sword drawn, at His left the angel of mercy
with sheathed sword. Gathered around the Madonna and craving her
intercession are S. Lorenzo and the Bishop SS. Severo, Costanzo, and
Ludovico. Beneath these to the right SS. Francis and Bernardino, and to
the left S. Peter Martyr and S. Sebastian, whose body is pierced with
many arrows. These saints have Perugia in their special keeping. At the
foot of the picture is shown the city of Perugia, with its emblematic
griffin on the wall. Within the walls a white-robed confraternity is
kneeling in prayer. Without them lurks Death, a bat-winged skeleton
with bow and arrows, whose victims strew the ground. But the prayers
have prevailed, and already the archangel Raphael strikes Death with
his spear. In the foreground outside the walls is a fugitive family,
the mother mounted on a donkey, carrying her infants in its paniers. At
a side gate two soldiers make off in haste, as the porter tells them
the state of the city. Perugians say that not Bonfigli but an angel
painted the face of the Madonna. They might well have said it of the
exquisite ‘Madonna del Soccorso’ in Sinibaldo Ibi’s plague banner of
A.D. 1482 in the church of S. Francisco at Montone. This fancy of the
protecting Madonna, spreading her robes over her suppliants, as a hen
gathers her chickens under her wings, is borrowed from Hebrew poetry.
It figures in a similar conception in the language of the ninety-first
Psalm: ‘I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope and my stronghold:
my God, in Him will I trust. For He shall deliver thee from the snare
of the hunter, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall defend thee
under His wings, and thou shalt be safe under His feathers.’
[Illustration: PLATE XIV (Face Page 138)
MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA BY BONFIGLI
Photograph by Alinari, Rome]
[Illustration: PLATE XV (Face Page 138)
MADONNA DEL SOCCORSO. BY SINIBALDO IBI
Photograph by Alinari, Rome]
[Illustration: PLATE XVI (Face Page 139)
PLAGUE BANNER. CHRIST AND SAINTS. BY BONFIGLI
Photograph by Anderson, Rome]
One more Madonna banner calls for passing notice—that of Bonfigli at
Corciano near Perugia, dated 1472. It has the same general character as
his ‘Madonna della Misericordia’. The quaint head-gear of the angels
supporting her robe is the rose-wreath, symbolic of the Madonna, which
appears, in one form or another, in so many of her pictures.
In nearly all these banners, as in other archaic works, the dwindling
size of individual figures indicates the lesser parts they have to
play. In many the Madonna fills almost all the banner’s surface.
In another of Bonfigli’s banners in the church of S. Maria Nuova at
Perugia the figure of Christ, wearing a cruciferous nimbus, dominates
the picture. He holds the arrows of pestilence ready to be launched
among the people. His face is sad and regretful, as He executes
faithfully the behests of His Father. On either side of Him saints
bear the emblems of the Passion, and to the right and left are the
darkened sun and moon. Beside Him kneel the Madonna and the Franciscan
S. Paulinus. In the lowest part of the picture are the chimneys and
towers of Perugia, with the pest-fiend, in the semblance of a huge
bat, bearing a scythe, and the Angel of Deliverance smiting him with
his lance. Below, shepherded by S. Benedict and S. Scholastica, the
diminutive citizens kneel in prayer.
Yet another type of plague banner is that in which the figure of a
saint plays the leading rôle. The saint is always Sebastian, only
because in Umbria and Tuscany he was the chief accredited protector
against pestilence. The finest example of this type is the S. Sebastian
of Sodoma, described above (pp. 100-1).
Plague banners were not the exclusive product of Umbria. Two of the
most famous, the S. Sebastian of Sodoma and the Sistine Madonna of
Raphael, painted at Siena and Florence respectively, are products of
the Tuscan school: but it is only in and around Perugia that they can
be found and studied to advantage. The Sistine Madonna, in which the
Madonna and Child are attended by S. Sixtus and S. Barbara, was painted
during an epidemic of pestilence for the Black Brothers of S. Sisto
at Piacenza. No record exists that it was ever actually used for the
purpose for which it was painted. Bonfigli, in the spirit of Phidias,
had painted ‘Mary the Queen of Heaven’: Raphael, in the spirit of
Praxiteles, had painted ‘Mary the Mother of God’. The people wanted a
queen and Raphael gave them a peasant woman. They could not see, as
Raphael saw, in womanhood the embodiment of gentleness spiritualizing
the brute in man. They could not see in motherhood the vision of
willing suffering transfigured to joy. It was this reunion of Art with
Nature, that dethroned the plague banner from the affections of the
common people.
Plague banners of less importance are those by Bonfigli at Civitella
Benazzone, by Sinibaldo Ibi in the convent of S. Ubaldo at Gubbio,
dated A.D. 1503, by Giannicola Manni in the church of S. Dominico
at Perugia, dated A.D. 1525, and by Berto di Giovanni in Perugia
Cathedral, dated A.D. 1526. There they will be seen for the most part
as framed altar-pieces.
Perugia’s greatest painter, Pietro Vannucci, better known as Perugino,
perished in the course of one of his city’s plagues. Tradition has it
that he died denying the Saviour and Madonna, whom his art had done
so much to glorify, and that his body was thrown into a desolate
grave beside a wayside oak. His sons searched diligently for their
father’s body, to lay it in the church of S. Agostino, but in vain,
among so many that had perished of the plague. It is, said, however,
that a priest found it and buried it under the walls of his church at
Fontignano.
The humbler _Pestblätter_ seem to have played much the same part in
the devotional activities of the individual as did the _gonfaloni_ in
those of the multitude. They were not exclusively German, but were
issued also from the presses of Flanders, the Netherlands, Italy, and
more rarely of France as well. Pictorial _Pestblätter_ are mostly rough
woodcuts or copper-plate engravings, crudely coloured by hand in some
cases, and belong chiefly to the last two-thirds of the fifteenth and
the first third of the sixteenth centuries. In the character of their
subjects they are usually simply devotional, and represent some act of
expiation or intercession on behalf of mankind. The three leading types
correspond closely to the three types of _gonfaloni_ in their subjects:
1. Christ, the suffering Redeemer, on the cross.
2. Intercession by the Virgin Mary or by Christ.
3. Memorials of the martyrdom of special plague saints,
such as St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and St. Antony.
And closely allied to this last,
4. Intercession by these special plague saints, or by
other saints whose association with plague was more
fortuitous and less widely recognized: such were
St. Quirinus, St. Adrian, and St. Valentine.
Many of these forms have attached to them some appropriate prayer or
invocation. Sometimes the religious element is supplemented by an
exposition of hygienic precautions or of remedial measures. Thus a
devotional cut comes to be blended with injunctions, usually in verse,
as to how to stave off pestilence by isolation, fumigation, washing,
or dietary; or how to cure it by such measures as bleeding, or
plasters to hasten maturation of the buboes.
In addition to these types, a non-pictorial type is met with, nearly
akin to the English Broadside, in which the religious purpose has
almost or wholly disappeared, and which sets out in uncompromising
prose directions of prophylactic or therapeutic character.
_Pestblätter_ originated in more ways than one. In times of pestilence
pilgrimages were often made to the shrines of special saints, and rough
representations of these saints were provided, as memorials of their
pilgrimage to the devout. Sometimes the object of homage was some
sacred picture, which would then be roughly reproduced as a memento.
At other times they seem to have been issued by religious communities
for purely devotional purposes. Those of secular character were either
printed by order of the municipalities, or were the product of private
medical enterprise. Original _Pestblätter_ are to be seen in the
leading museums of most European countries. A selection of these has
been admirably reproduced in a portfolio[164] by Heitz and Mündel of
Strasbourg.
Plate XVII (1) is a woodcut, probably printed at Nuremberg at the
commencement of the fifteenth century. The Almighty is depicted with
the drawn sword of pestilence in His hand, within what would seem
from its colouring in the original to be a representation of the
rose-wreath, emblematic of the Virgin Mary. In the centre are St.
Sebastian with his symbolic arrow, and an angel tending the plague sore
of St. Roch. Below is a prayer to these two saints.
Plate XVII (2) shows the Almighty above, with the shafts of pestilence
in His hands. The crowned Madonna shelters beneath her robe her
suppliants, among whom are dignitaries of the Church. Below a group
of saints are interceding with the Virgin and Child and St. Anna. The
whole is encircled by the Virgin’s girdle wrought into a rose-wreath.
[Illustration: PLATE XVII (Between Pages 142 and 143)
1. THE ALMIGHTY WITH SS. SEBASTIAN AND ROCH]
[Illustration: PLATE XVII (Between Pages 142 and 143)
2. THE ALMIGHTY, MADONNA AND SUPPLIANTS. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, S. ANNA
AND SUPPLIANTS]
St. Anthony is a favourite figure of these _Pestblätter_. He is more
closely associated with plague and pestilence in Germany than is the
case in Italy. He is also patron saint against erysipelas, known as St.
Anthony’s Fire, which often raged in epidemics in pre-Listerian times.
He is commonly represented with the cross, on which he was crucified,
with a crutch symbolic of his great age and feebleness, and with an
exorcising bell. The passing bell was tolled originally not only to
ask for prayers for the soul of the departed, but also to scare away
evil spirits from it. The pig, that accompanies St. Anthony, is the
emblem of the Devil, whose temptings he successfully repelled. Even
in the absence of St. Anthony himself, his cross in the form of the
Greek T is often introduced, sometimes with Christ nailed upon it. From
this association of St. Anthony with the cross, it became customary to
appeal to him, as to the crucifix, in times of pestilence.
The association of SS. Quirinus, Adrian, and Valentine of Rufach with
plague is purely local and incidental. St. Quirinus was primarily the
patron saint of the gouty, and St. Valentine of the epileptic, so
that the name _Veltins Krankheit_ was applied to epilepsy. St. Adrian
held under his special protection the Flemish brewers, and the more
creditable patronage of the plague-stricken was only a later accretion.
* * * * *
A very large number of pictures are designed to commemorate specific
plagues, and were painted in fulfilment of vows made to the Madonna and
saints for deliverance from plague. Many of these have already been
considered in connexion with the legends and cults of SS. Sebastian and
Roch, to whom they were dedicated. But in far the larger proportion of
these pictures the central figure is the Madonna (see Plates XI and
XII). Sometimes she is attended by SS. Sebastian and Roch, and by other
saints as well. The added saints are, as a rule, the special protectors
of the city, for which the thank-offering has been vowed. Sometimes
they are the patron saints of confraternities, for whom they have been
painted. Sometimes the special medical saints, Cosmas and Damian, are
appropriately added to the pictures. Examples may be seen in almost any
gallery of Italian pictures. In the Brera, Cima de Conigliano (A.D.
1460-1518) has painted the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist,
St. Sebastian, the Magdalen and St. Roch, the last-named showing an
incised wound on the inner side of the right thigh. The character of
the picture may be taken as conclusive evidence of its origin and
purpose.
Titian’s picture in the Vatican shows the Madonna and Child in glory,
and St. Sebastian, St. Nicholas, St. Catharine, St. Peter, and St.
Francis are the attendant saints. This picture was painted by Titian
after the cessation of a plague epidemic at Venice for the Franciscan
church of S. Nicolò de Frari.
Correggio’s ‘Madonna di San Sebastiano’, in which she is attended by
SS. Sebastian and Roch, with S. Geminiano, the patron saint of Modena,
was painted in A.D. 1515 in commemoration of a plague that devastated
that city three years previously.
Yet another by Guido Reni (A.D. 1574-1642), in the Academy at Bologna,
was painted at the instance of the senate of Bologna, after the plague
of A.D. 1630. It was carried in solemn procession through the city
to its consecration, and from this circumstance has been called ‘Il
Pallione del Voto’. The rainbow beneath the Madonna’s feet, and the
olive branch in the hand of the infant Christ, each signify the return
of peace. The attendant saints are the special protectors of Bologna,
St. Petronius, St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. Proculus, St. Florian, St.
Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier.
Raphael’s ‘Madonna of Foligno’, in the Vatican, has been accounted by
some a plague picture on account of its general character, and of the
fireball descending on the city of Foligno. Raphael, however, painted
the picture in A.D. 1512, the very year in which it is recorded that
an aerolite fell into Foligno: the picture probably commemorates the
escape of some individual or institution. There was a disastrous plague
in Foligno, but not till A.D. 1523, and it has been depicted in a
hideous picture by Gaetano Gandolfi of Bologna (A.D. 1734-1802), which
is now in the Corsini Palace at Rome.
Miraculous Madonnas abound in Italy, but are, as a rule, of little
artistic interest. A pleasing exception is the ‘Madonna and Child’ that
hangs in the tribune of the church of Carmine in Perugia. It was put up
to commemorate the deliverance of Perugia from plague at the prayer of
the Perugian Carmelites: at each recurrence of plague it was the object
of popular adoration. Formerly it was covered with a gauze veil, which
caught fire and was destroyed, but the Madonna herself escaped any
trace of injury.
The Madonna of Ara Coeli and the Madonna of S. Maria Maggiore are both
accredited deliverers from plague and pestilence in Rome.
Florence, too, has her miraculous Madonna in the small village of
Impruneta. This dark panel, blackened and perished with the lapse
of years, was found, so the legend goes, in the soil at Impruneta,
uttering a cry as the workman’s spade struck it. Seldom or never
exposed to the gaze of the devout, she has suffered the indignity of
an exposure at the hands of the omnipresent photographer. In A.D.
1527 plague broke out in Florence in the early summer. On June 2,
an enormous festival was celebrated in honour of the Virgin of the
Annunciation, that she might be persuaded to succour the Commonwealth
in its troubles. But in July and August the mortality rose to 150-200
a day, and in the autumn to twice these numbers, so that all business
was at a standstill, and the city seemed deserted. Then the government
determined to have recourse to the Black Virgin of Impruneta, whom the
Commonwealth of Florence has invoked so often in various crises of its
history. Of her Segni[165] says: ‘To this mother of God our city has
never publicly applied in vain, in whatever extremity of distress. It
is no light or silly thing, which I am here affirming: for in time of
drought she ever sent rain: in periods of flood, she has restored to us
fine weather: from pestilence she has removed the poison: and in every
most grievous ill she has found its appropriate remedy.’ So the Black
Virgin was brought from Impruneta, and the magistrates of Florence,
‘barefooted and in mourning, received her at the gate of the city, and
carried her in solemn and very sad procession to the Church of the
Servites. Forty thousand citizens had died in the month of November.
But the never-failing Virgin of Impruneta prevailed on this occasion
also. For with the coming of the cold weather, the sickness began to
abate. And thus the faith of the Florentines in their charm was more
than ever confirmed.’ The Black Virgin still watches over Florence in
time of drought. Readers of _Romola_ will recall that other stirring
procession of the Impruneta Virgin, in which Savonarola strode along
defiantly among his company of black and white Dominicans.
Throughout France and Italy numerous pictures may be seen, recording
the ministrations of local or locally venerated saints in time of
pestilence. Such is Tiepolo’s picture in the cathedral at Este, showing
St. Tecla liberating Este from plague. Pictures such as this stand
midway between the group of votive pictures and the group of actual
plague scenes, of which Raphael (A.D. 1483-1520) is the earliest
exponent.
[Illustration: PLATE XVIII (Face Page 146)
THE IMPRUNETA VIRGIN]
[Illustration: PLATE XIX S. TECLA LIBERATES ESTE FROM PLAGUE
By Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Photograph by Naya, Venice (Face Page
147)]
Raphael’s drawing of ‘Plague’,[166] now in the Uffizi gallery at
Florence, has become much worn with time. The picture is divided into
two parts by a head of the god Terminus mounted on a lofty pedestal.
To the right it is night-time, but the interior of a house of mourning
is shown in vertical section. In its courtyard is a young man, with
a torch in his right hand, counting the number of stricken animals,
while with his left he prevents one of the sheep from coming near to
those that are dead. An ewe lies dead with a young lamb fastened to her
dried-up udder. An ox lying down surveys the scene sadly. Above this
corpse-strewn court a stream of light, penetrating into the interior
of a room, illumines the figures of two Sisters of Charity, as they
minister to the master of the house, who is dying: he is stretched on
his bed, lying in a dense shadow—the shadow of impending death. He
seems to turn away from them and to reject their help.
In the other part of the picture it is day, and daylight shows
up everywhere scenes of suffering, death, and desolation. In the
foreground lies the body of a woman stretched out in death, while her
child struggles to reach her ice-cold breast. The father bends down
hastily to hold the child away, and, as he does so, covers his nose
and mouth with his hand, to keep out the contagion of the pestilence.
Behind this group an older woman turns away in horror: before it, an
old man buries his face in his hands against the plinth of the statue
in an anguish of sorrow, while a young man makes off in panic. In
the background broken columns and the dead body of a horse serve to
intensify the desolation of the scene.
Raphael’s rendering of the scene, for all the horror of its details,
serves rather to inspire pity than horror. He holds the balance evenly
between the horrible realities of the plague and the redeeming
spirituality of human nature. Compassion and suffering stand side by
side. The ox pities his kind passively, as the Sisters seek to minister
actively to their kind. In the features and attitude of the child
Raphael has depicted the devotion that does not die with death. The
deepest note of pathos is touched in the form of the old man in the
centre of the picture, whose grey hairs are brought down in sorrow to
the grave.
It has been asserted that Raphael’s rendering of the dead mother and
the child was inspired by an actual record of Ambroise Paré, but as
Paré was only born three years before Raphael died, the statement falls
to the ground.
Raphael’s debt seems to go back as far as to Aristides of Thebes, who
flourished about 340 B.C. Pliny[167] mentions a picture by him, which
so impressed Alexander the Great, at the sack of Thebes, that he took
it for himself, and ordered that it should be sent to Pella. According
to Pliny, the picture represented a wounded mother lying at the point
of death, and her infant child creeping to her breast. Fear is written
in the expression of her face, lest the child should draw blood from
her breast, now that her milk is dry.
Raphael’s drawing has been engraved by Marco Antonio Raimondi under
the name of ‘Il Morbetto’. In Delaborde’s _Marc-Antoine Raimondi_ it
is reproduced under the name ‘La Peste de Phrygie’, because on the
pedestal are inscribed the words of Vergil:
Linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebant
corpora.[168]
Vergil, in this brief description of pestilence, aims at no more than
mere poetic effect. It is introduced only to fill up the cup of trouble
for the Trojan wanderers, and is compressed into a few lines. The
Trojan fleet had just made the land: Aeneas had laid the foundations of
a new town, and Ilium was to live again in Pergamus. Then the plague
broke out.
[Illustration: PLATE XX PLAGUE. A DRAWING BY RAPHAEL (Face Page 148)]
Iamque fere sicco subductae littore puppes;
Connubiis arvisque novis operata iuventus,
.. .. .. .. subito cum tabida membris,
corrupto caeli tractu, miserandaque venit
arboribusque satisque lues et letifer annus.
linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebant
corpora; tum steriles exurere Sirius agros;
arebant herbae, et victum seges aegra negabat.
Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach,
And bent on marriages the young men vie
To till new settlements, while I to each
Due law dispense and dwelling place supply.
When from a tainted quarter of the sky
Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize,
And a foul pestilence creeps down from high
On mortal limbs and standing crops and trees,
A season black with death, and pregnant with disease.
Sweet life from mortals fled: they drooped and died.
Fierce Sirius scorched the fields, and herbs and grain
Were parched, and food the wasting crops denied.
(FAIRFAX TAYLOR.)
As it stands, this is an outline sketch of a famine-pestilence, which
Raphael had no intention of depicting, when he adopted the line. Surely
Sisters of Charity would not figure in a Phrygian plague, some thousand
years before Christ!
Besides pictures, a few medals exist commemorative of plagues prior
to the sixteenth century: these were sometimes struck as mediums of
spiritual consolation. Frequent devices on these were representations
of Christ on the Cross, or of a Serpent on a pole. The specimen figured
here (Plate I (4)) is a Wittenberg thaler of 1528. It shows these two
devices on the opposite faces of the medal, each with a descriptive
legend.
The fifteenth century had drawn to a close in Italy amid a confusion
of epidemics. Pintor, the personal physician of Pope Alexander VI,
has left a book in which he says that the _morbus Gallicus_ first
appeared at Rome in March 1493 and had claimed numerous victims by the
August following. Then, after an inundation of the Tiber in December
1495, plague broke out fiercely in Rome. Pintor states that the touch
of certain precious stones was vaunted as a specific. In 1493 plague
was raging also at Genoa and Naples. At the latter city the mortality
amounted to 20,000 souls. A Genoese chronicler, Seneraga, attributes
the outbreak at Genoa to pollution of the shore by the dead bodies
of the Jews, who had sought sanctuary there on their expulsion from
Spain in 1492, but had died of starvation on the outskirts of the
inhospitable city. Jewish writers asserted that there was plague in
Spain, and that it was carried by the fugitives in their ships to
Italy. Most of the expelled Jews found shelter from the persecution
of the Cross under the protection of the Crescent, in Constantinople,
Salonica, the Levant, and Northern Africa. It was this far-reaching
epidemic that drove Charles VIII of France out of Florence, Rome, and
Naples in succession, almost as soon as his army had entered them.
FOOTNOTES:
[158] Ode 4.
[159] Bk. I, Eleg. 3.
[160] _Aeneid_, vi. 644.
[161] Passus xxiii. 100-5.
[162] Rio, _L’Art chrétien_; and Crawfurd, _Proceedings of Roy. Soc. of
Med._, 1913, vol. vi, pp. 37-48.
[163] Duff Gordon, _Story of Perugia_ (translation).
[164] _Pestblätter des xv. Jahrhunderts._
[165] Vol. i, Bk. I, and Trollope, _History of Commonwealth of
Florence_, vol. iv.
[166] Gruyer, _Raphael et l’Antiquité_.
[167] _Nat. Hist._, lib. xxxv.
[168] _Aeneid_, iii. 140.