PLATE XXIV (Face Page 175)
BORROMEO INTERCEDING FOR
THE PLAGUE-STRICKEN
A marble bas-relief by P. Puget
Puget (1622-94) has represented the same subject in a [marble bas-relief], now in the Santé at Marseilles. Borromeo kneels in earnest supplication amid a group of dead and dying. His eyes are fixed on a cross borne aloft by cherubs. He is attended by acolytes, who carry a cross and chalice, and a child clings to his robes. In the foreground a convict drags off a corpse for burial. In the background a woman bends in wild despair over a bed, on which a dead man is stretched.
In 1630 occurred the Great Plague of Milan, well known to many by the description of Manzoni (1785-1873) in his Promessi Sposi. For his information he has drawn on many sources, and not least on the contemporary record of Canon Ripamonti, written by request of the Magistracy as a supplement to his History of Milan.
This volume on the plague bears an emblematic engraving on the title-page. A skeleton holds in his hands weapons, armour, bones, and books all strung together. The toes of his feet protrude from beneath a carpet on which lies a plague-stricken man. In front of the skeleton is an altar, on which stand taper and crucifix. Beside the altar sits a woman, a drawn sword in her right hand, her left arm embracing a stork: a naked child is by her side. On the frontal of the altar is the title of the book: ‘Josephi Ripamontii, Canonici Scalensis Chronistae Urbis Mediolani, De Peste Quae Fuit Anno cIɔIɔcxxx Libri v, Desumpti Ex Annalibus Urbis Quos LX Decurionum Autoritate Scribebat.’
In his Storia della Colonna Infame, published in 1840, Manzoni has told the trial and punishment of the two Untori, accused of spreading the plague by means of ointments. The home of one of them was destroyed by order of the State, and the ground on which it stood declared accursed. On it a stone column was erected in 1630, bearing the following inscription:[176]