Demographic Crises

Impact on Art

There was little impact on the visual arts right away. Europeans had known plague in the past and at first no one had any reason to think the devastation would recur. As the plague returned over and over, though, portrayals of death became more common, until it was virtually a genre in the later 15th century. Often referred to as the danse macabre, that term technically refers to a very particular representation.

fresco
The Black Death,
Unknown, 1355

This fresco from the small French town of Lavaudieu dates from 1355 and is one of the very few paintings of the Black Death prior to the second outbreak. It's interesting because of the way in which the artist chose to represent the blind way in which the plague struck anyone and everyone.

drawing
The Three Living and Three Dead

Writing about death was nothing new to the Middle Ages. A 13th century legend, for example, talked about an encounter had by three noblemen. While out hunting, they chanced upon three corpses of clergymen that raised up as they neared and called upon them to repent of their wicked ways. In the 15th century, though, this motif enjoyed a huge popularity in painting and illustrations. The same goes for certain other stories where the living encountered the dead. It was as if people were looking for ways to give expression to the frequency and nearness of death, and in part turned to older legends as a source.

woodcut
From the Chronicle of Nuremburg, 1493
woodcut by Michael Wolgemut

This final example is from a German chronicle and shows skeletons dancing. Notice the gruesome detail, which is a hallmark of this sort of art. In picture after picture we see bodies meticulously observed in various states of decomposition. Entrails spill out, worms crawl through eye sockets—the artists clearly know their subject matter. What's astonishing to us is that this sort of art was commissioned. People were requesting this. These images are from church walls, or from a chronicle commissioned by a city council. And there are scores upon hundreds with the same gruesome themes.

The Black Death did not cause this art. Rather, the art was an expression of its times (as it always is). While our attention is immediately grabbed by the graphic nature of the works, they were intended to be didactic. They illustrated how death comes to one and all, regardless of station; it's no accident that so many of the images contain pictures of the rich and powerful. They sometimes warned the viewer to spiritual reform by reminding him of the nearness of death. But always the art reminded everyone that death was all around, literally at your shoulder. And during most of the period covered in our course, it was.