Plague and pestilence in literature and art

by Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

While the Scuola was in course of construction, the original church of S. Rocco was found to be insecure, and was rebuilt, but not in its present form, which is no older than 1725. In 1559 the Confraternity entrusted its decoration to Tintoretto, and there are still to be seen there, on the rare occasions when daylight suffices, the four pictures in which the artist set himself to illustrate the life of the saint. These are (1) St. Roch in hospital; (2) St. Roch healing animals; (3) The capture of St. Roch; (4) The appearance of an angel to St. Roch in prison. The small picture that hangs by a side-altar—the ‘Betrayal of Christ’, by Titian—has received all the homage that should have been paid to Tintoretto’s subjects: indeed, the offerings rendered to this ‘miraculous’ picture enabled the guild to rebuild their Scuola. To this church the Doge came yearly on August 16 to implore St. Roch to ward off plague from the Republic.

In 1560 the growing wealth of the guild induced them to call in competition the leading painters of Venice to decorate the halls of the Scuola. Andrea Schiavone, Federigo Zuccaro, Giuseppe Salviati, Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto were all invited to prepare drawings and submit them to the judges on the appointed day. While the others had merely sketched designs, Tintoretto had finished a complete picture, ‘St. Roch in glory’, that now occupies the centre of the ceiling of the refectory. To ensure still further his success, Tintoretto presented the picture to the guild. From this time until 1588 the decoration of the Scuola formed the chief part of Tintoretto’s work. By the beginning of 1566 he had completed the superb ‘Crucifixion’ in the refectory of the upper hall, and on its completion he was admitted to the Confraternity, and assigned an annual subsidy of 100 ducats (about £50) in payment for three finished pictures each year. Here, at any rate, he found scope for the expression of an inexhaustible fancy: but those who have attempted to study the paintings of the Scuola will appreciate something of the difficulties he had to surmount owing to the defective light which, as in the church, renders the pictures invisible except on the brightest days.

As Michelangelo had done in the Sistine Chapel, so Tintoretto thought out in advance a comprehensive and harmonious scheme for the entire adornment of the halls. The key-note of it all is the dedication of the Scuola to San Rocco, the patron saint of the plague-stricken, and also of those who ministered to them. So the paintings in the upper hall represent acts of mercy and deliverance, illustrated in Christ’s life on earth. Those in the lower hall of entrance, eight in number, setting forth mainly the history of the Virgin and her infant Son, form thus an appropriate prelude to the upper series. Giovanni Marchiori and his pupils have faithfully pursued the scheme in the twenty subjects from the life of St. Roch carved in the panelling of the upper hall. The great staircase that joins the two halls is decorated with frescoes of plague scenes by Zanchi (1666) and Negri (1673), of little artistic merit. Yet another memorial of plague survives in the rows of wooden standard lamps, set round the upper hall, which the brethren used to carry in processions to the honour of their patron saint.

Tintoretto was still at his work in the Scuola when the appalling plague of 1575-7 fell on Venice, carrying Titian to his grave, within close hail of his centenary. While others were hurried away to obscure burial in the common plague pits of Sant’ Erasmo and the outlying islands, the body of the old man, who had brought so great glory to Venice, was accorded the honour of a public funeral by order of the Signoria. After lying in state it was carried to the beautiful Gothic church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, wearing the insignia of Imperial Knighthood, conferred on him by Charles V, and placed in a tomb at the foot of the altar of the Cross. Here Titian sleeps his last sleep unmindful, be it hoped, of the outrage in marble inflicted on his memory by Ferdinand I of Austria, at the hands of Luigi and Pietro Zandomeneghi. Titian’s eldest son died with him, and his second son, Pomponio, a canon of Milan, hastened to Venice, as soon as he was assured that all danger was past, and quickly dissipated the fortune that the painter had amassed by the thrift and labour of a lifetime.

For three years this plague devastated Venice, carrying off no less than 50,000 souls, one quarter of her whole population. The Doge, Luigi Mocenigo, displayed throughout the utmost courage and devotion. He himself superintended all the efforts to arrest the plague, and ministered in person to the sick. He went in solemn procession with all the confraternities of Venice to the church of S. Rocco, to vow the erection of another church, if only the saint would intercede for them. As Cyprian and Gregory had done before him, he addressed words of consolation and encouragement to his people in the sanctuary of his cathedral church. But Luigi was dead when the day came for his successor to summon the people of Venice to St. Mark’s to fulfil Luigi’s vow.

Picture to yourself Venice one July Sunday under a cloudless sky. From the pulpit of St. Mark’s some aged patriarch has proclaimed the freedom of the city from plague. Out of the coloured gloom of the church files the procession into the dazzling glare of the Piazza. All Venice is there: Venice is in jubilant mood. St. Mark’s, Ducal Palace, Campanile, and all the buildings around are gay with carpets and tapestries, with pictures and gilded shields. Banners of gorgeous colours flutter to the crisp sea-breeze from the columns of Theodore and the Lion. Amid wild shouting of people and roar of cannon, and ringing of bells the procession wheels to the Piazzetta. Before it lies the lagoon, stretching over to S. Giorgio Maggiore, and away to the Lido beyond, sparkling and shimmering in the sunlight, like some great scintillating jewel. God and man seem to have joined hands there to create the fairest spot of earth. From Piazzetta to Giudecca a bridge of boats has been thrown over, near half a mile in length. On to the bridge goes the procession.[175] The guilds and confraternities, displaying their respective standards and carrying crosses, images of the Madonna and saints, and reliquaries, lead the way, followed by magistrates, nobles, and their ladies. Next come the patriarchs, the Church dignitaries, and canons in their rochets, the friars, chanting, under the banners of their fourteen orders, the clergy robed in rich copes embroidered with gold and sewn with jewels, under their eleven banners. Last of all, accompanied by senators and ambassadors, comes the Doge, Sebastiano Venier, hero of Lepanto, a noble figure, robed in white with a splendid mantle of silver brocade hanging from his shoulders. In a temporary wooden oratory built close to the place where the Redentore Church was to rise from the plans of Palladio, Mass was sung this day to music by Giuseppe Zarlino of Chioggia, the Doge’s chief musician. And the sound of this jubilant day has echoed down the ages and may be still heard at the yearly Festa del Redentore in July, as the procession passes over its bridges of boats from San Zobenigo to Zattere, and Zattere to Giudecca, but shorn of much of its former glory. Where stood the wooden chauntry stands now Palladio’s church, a plague-spot on the face of nature. Théophile Gautier, nevertheless, saw beauty in its aspect by the light of the setting sun. Within there are no pictures and no memorials of the plague to which it owes its being. A Venetian medal, showing the Doge with the banner of St. Mark kneeling before Christ, commemorates this plague.

Venice has other churches to commemorate her plagues besides San Rocco and the Redentore; oldest of all, S. Giobbe, church and convent, built in the middle of the fifteenth century (1462-71) by Doge Cristoforo Moro, the friend of S. Bernardino, and dedicated to the Job of Scripture who was plagued with all manner of diseases. Over the high altar was once the famous picture by Giovanni Bellini, now in the Accademia, of the Madonna and Child enthroned between St. Job, St. John Baptist, St. Sebastian, St. Francis, and St. Louis of Toulouse. Venice brought the cult of S. Giobbe along with plague from the east: he is hardly known elsewhere in Italy.

Only a few years later (1506-18) another plague church, that of S. Sebastiano, was built for the Order of St. Jerome by the two architects, F. da Castiglione and A. Scarpagnino. It is the burial-place of Veronese, to whom most of its decoration is due. The ceilings of both church and sacristy are enriched with his pictures, set in deep gilded mouldings. Over the high altar is an ‘Apotheosis of St. Sebastian’, to whom the Madonna appears in heaven, along with St. Mark, St. Jerome, St. John Baptist, and St. Catharine of Alexandria. To the left of the altar is Veronese’s famous ‘Martyrdom of Marcus and Marcellinus’.

While this church was building Giorgione died of plague. About his four and thirtieth year he had become wildly enamoured of a young woman, and when the plague seized her he still paid her secret visits, and taking the sickness from her lips with her kisses, he paid for his love with his life.

Last, but best known of all, is the church of S. Maria della Salute, begun by Baldassare Longhena in 1632, to commemorate the plague of 1630-1, which carried off 46,490 in Venice, and 94,235 in the whole lagoons. Doge Niccolò Contarini had vowed a church to the Madonna of Health, if she would deliver the Republic from the plague. During its building a temporary wooden oratory was built on a piece of land, which the Knights Templar had bestowed on the Republic, and Doge, Council, nobles, and people crossed over the Grand Canal by a bridge of boats to hear a solemn Mass. In the sacristy of Longhena’s church are two seventeenth century prints, one showing the procession as it crosses the pontoon bridge, the other, as it files up into the church. Each year in November the procession starts from St. Mark’s and crosses the Grand Canal by the Redentore route, and circles round the church to the entrance facing the Canal. Modern Venice has transformed a solemn pageant into a fancy fair. These prints show the church as it now stands, on a platform at the top of a great flight of stairs leading up from the Grand Canal, but a statue of the Madonna has replaced the Angel of Pestilence on the summit of its larger dome.