Plague and pestilence in literature and art

by Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

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.