The statue of Belsunce, clad in full episcopal robes, stands with face raised and arms outstretched to heaven, in attitude of earnest supplication. Before him Nature has set a landscape of surpassing beauty: sea, earth, and sky give freely of their best. Far down below a polyglot people move hither and thither around the harbour quays, like ants, at their appointed tasks. Beyond it spreads a matchless expanse of Mediterranean sea, now smooth and silvery as a mirror, now fretful with the rising tide. Away over the sea and over the low land that bounds the bay, the evening sun lights up the face of Belsunce with a last lingering radiance, as it goes down to its setting in a glory of golden hues. If man’s graven image may enjoy the perfect happiness denied to man, then surely Belsunce has his reward.
Marseilles is rich in reminiscence of her bishop. In the Bureau d’Intendance Sanitaire hangs a pleasing portrait of Belsunce by Gobert; while in the Musée may be seen a poor picture, by Mansian, of him giving the Sacrament to the victims of the plague. François Gérard (1770-1837) presented his ‘[Peste de Marseille]’ to the Bureau d’Intendance Sanitaire, where now it hangs. The wan dismal colouring of the picture accords ill with the striking vigour of the composition. In the foreground is set forth the whole tragedy of a family stricken with plague. On the ground lies the father writhing with agony: his hands are clenched, his eyes are starting from their sockets: the dressing in the right armpit indicates one site of the disease. The mother, seated on a chest, clasps to her body her elder boy, wrapped in a blanket, too weak to stand: the younger child leans against his mother, his eyes fixed in terror on his dying father. Anguish is depicted in the death-like pallor of the mother’s face. In the background Belsunce in full robes distributes to the sick and starving poor the bread which an attendant is carrying. To the left of the foreground bodies of the dead are lying huddled up beneath an awning, while to the right convicts are dragging corpses away for burial. The sublime serenity of the good bishop seems to bring to his stricken people in their anguish some promise of that peace which passeth all understanding.
PLATE XXIX (Face Page 206)
PESTE DE MARSEILLE.
BY FRANÇOIS GÉRARD
Photograph by Giraudon, Paris
