Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy*

Abstract

The Infamous Black Death of 1348 signaled the reappearance of bubonic plague in Europe after long centuries of absence. Contemporary accounts vividly describe the shock and horror of universal and indiscriminate mortality. From Tournai, Gilles Li Muisis observed that “no one was secure, whether rich, in moderate circumstances or poor, but everyone from day to day waited on the will of the Lord.” In any given area, between one third to half of the population would die. Worse still, the Black Death was only the beginning of a worldwide pandemic, or cyclical series of epidemics, recurring at intervals of two to twenty years throughout Europe until well into the seventeenth century.