PLATE V (Face Page 95)
FRESCO IN S. PIETRO IN VINCOLI, ROME
Photograph by Anderson, Rome
CHAPTER VI
In the summer of a.d. 680 Rome was again gripped in the toils of an appalling plague that had spread over the greater part of Italy. Paul the Deacon[141] says that eclipses of both sun and moon in May were followed by pestilence in the months of July, August, and September. Describing its ravages at Ticinum (Pavia) Paul says that ‘the number of the dead was so great that parents were often carried to burial on the same biers as their children, and brothers along with sisters.... And then many saw with their own eyes a good and a bad angel passing through the city by night. And whenever at the bidding of the good angel, the bad one, who seemed to carry a lance in his hand, struck so many times with his lance on the door of each house, as many of that household would die on the following day. Then it was revealed to some one that the plague would not cease until an altar was set up to Sebastian, saint and martyr, at the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli. This was done, and as soon as the altar was set up, the relics of the martyr-saint Sebastian were brought from Rome, and forthwith the plague ceased.’
Paul the Deacon, beyond all doubt, was referring to the church of [S. Pietro in Vincoli] at Pavia, but the Romans of later date claimed the legend for their own church of the same name, in which it has been embodied in a fresco of the fifteenth century, ascribed to Pollajuolo (1429-98). In the background, at the summit of a flight of stairs, presumably suggested by those of Ara Coeli, a citizen is telling to Pope Agatho, who is seated among his cardinals, his dream that the pestilence will not cease till the body of S. Sebastian is brought into the city. On the right the good angel indicates the condemned houses to the bad angel in the guise of the Evil One, who strikes on the door with his lance. On the left a procession, carrying a banner on which the Madonna is depicted with robe spread out in protecting attitude, is bringing in the relics. The foreground is strewn with corpses of the dead. In the sky, bow in hand, hovers the angel that spreads the pestilence. To the left is a group of the Almighty and angels, now almost obliterated.
It is not generally recognized that the well-known picture ‘La Peste à Rome’, by Delaunay (a.d. 1828-91), now in the Musée du Luxembourg at Paris, was directly inspired by this fresco. The scene is laid in a street of Rome, which is strewn with bodies of dead and dying, among which the good and evil angels are busy at their task. The figure of a youth huddled up in a brown shawl on a doorstep is a living picture of misery. In the background a procession bearing a cross is descending a flight of stairs, and a fire to purify the atmosphere is burning in the open street. An effigy of Aesculapius and a colossal equestrian statue of Constantine are introduced in the manner of the Renaissance. The chief merit of the picture lies in the excellence of its draughtsmanship.