CHAPTER VIII

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 hisDe Contemptu Mundihad 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 ofpestilence 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 aTriumph of Death, and Langland in hisVision of Piers Plowman[161]has given us in verse a Dance of Death:

Death came driving after, and all to dust pashedKynges 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 knightesSwouned 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 ina.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, abouta.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 manuscriptHoraeof 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’.

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 froma.d.1431 to 1443. It has been attributed on insufficient evidence to Holbein. It was destroyed by a riotous mob ina.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 ofa.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 hisOde 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 ofpictures 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, orgonfaloni,[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 (ina.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 thegonfalonimade 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 aloudMisericordia. 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 thecity 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. Astriking banner is that by Bonfigli, in the church of S. Fiorenzo at Perugia, painted ina.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 datea.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 ofa.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.’

PLATE XIV(Face Page 138)MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIABY BONFIGLIPhotograph by Alinari, Rome

PLATE XIV(Face Page 138)

MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIABY BONFIGLI

Photograph by Alinari, Rome

PLATE XV(Face Page 138)MADONNA DEL SOCCORSO.BY SINIBALDO IBIPhotograph by Alinari, Rome

PLATE XV(Face Page 138)

MADONNA DEL SOCCORSO.BY SINIBALDO IBI

Photograph by Alinari, Rome

PLATE XVI(Face Page 139)PLAGUE BANNER.CHRIST AND SAINTS.BY BONFIGLIPhotograph by Anderson, Rome

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 asaint 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, dateda.d.1503, by Giannicola Manni in the church of S. Dominico at Perugia, dateda.d.1525, and by Berto di Giovanni in Perugia Cathedral, dateda.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 somuch 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 humblerPestblätterseem to have played much the same part in the devotional activities of the individual as did thegonfaloniin 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. PictorialPestblätterare 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 ofgonfaloniin 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.

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, ordietary; 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.

Pestblätteroriginated 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. OriginalPestblätterare 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.

PLATE XVII(Between Pages 142 and 143)1. THE ALMIGHTY WITHSS. SEBASTIAN AND ROCH

PLATE XVII(Between Pages 142 and 143)

1. THE ALMIGHTY WITHSS. SEBASTIAN AND ROCH

PLATE XVII(Between Pages 142 and 143)2. THE ALMIGHTY, MADONNA AND SUPPLIANTS.THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, S. ANNA AND SUPPLIANTS

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 thesePestblätter. 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 nameVeltins Krankheitwas 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 PlatesXIandXII).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 ina.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 ofa.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 ina.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 tilla.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 ofImpruneta. 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. Ina.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 aday, 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 ofRomolawill 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, showingSt. 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.

PLATE XVIII(Face Page 146)THE IMPRUNETA VIRGIN

PLATE XVIII(Face Page 146)

THE IMPRUNETA VIRGIN

PLATE XIXS. TECLA LIBERATES ESTE FROM PLAGUEBy Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.Photograph by Naya, Venice(Face Page 147)

PLATE XIXS. 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 redeemingspirituality 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 340b.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’sMarc-Antoine Raimondiit is reproduced under the name ‘La Peste de Phrygie’, because on the pedestal are inscribed the words of Vergil:

Linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebantcorpora.[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.

PLATE XXPLAGUE.A DRAWING BY RAPHAEL(Face Page 148)

PLATE XXPLAGUE.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 venitarboribusque satisque lues et letifer annus.linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebantcorpora; 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 vieTo till new settlements, while I to eachDue law dispense and dwelling place supply.When from a tainted quarter of the skyRank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize,And a foul pestilence creeps down from highOn 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 grainWere parched, and food the wasting crops denied.(Fairfax Taylor.)

Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach,And bent on marriages the young men vieTo till new settlements, while I to eachDue law dispense and dwelling place supply.When from a tainted quarter of the skyRank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize,And a foul pestilence creeps down from highOn 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 grainWere 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 themorbus Gallicusfirst appeared at Rome in March 1493 and had claimed numerous victims by the Augustfollowing. 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.

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