In mid-14th century, the Black Death plague swept across Europe, killing more than 40% of the population. While the continent experienced economic growth and a cultural flourishing in early years, towards the middle of the century, Europe was in crisis from war, famine and disease. However, cultural change continued to persist as arts took on new forms and expressions in the context of persistent death and humanitarian crises around them.
When the Black Death came to Europe, the Renaissance was just beginning. During the plague itself, art was rarely produced, but eventually began to ramp up again. Artists used the medium as a tool of expression to deal with and relay the psychological impacts of the crisis. During the plague, mid-century art sought to convey hope more frequently than despair. People did not seek to relive the horrors that were an ongoing reality. Religious art became prominent, as hieratic linearity returned as artists retreated from rounded forms of old-fashioned styles. This change demonstrated a reliance of traditional religious values in the midst of a crisis that many saw as God’s punishment for human immorality. An example of this can be seen in the altarpiece by Andrea di Cione named the Strozzi Altarpiece, which is centered around the figure of Jesus Christ, which evokes imagery of the Last Judgment without the spatial indicators of time or surroundings. Other scenes present in religious art of the time included Christ’s walking on water, salvation of Henry II, and Thomas Aquinas’ which all reflected themes of hope, sanctity, and promise of salvation, which although are common in religious art, were especially relevant during the Black Death (Stokstad & Cothren, 2018).
However, after the Black Death, art took on my more profoundly perverse and pessimistic tones. Some of these include the fresco at Camponsanto at Pisa, The Trimph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and the Divine Comedy Illustrated by Botticelli. For example, The Triumph of Death is an iconic example of the illustrations of the crises that affected Europe in mid-14th century, with the desolate landscape of famine, images of war, and corpses in various stages of decay that characterized the Plague. As fear of death became an ongoing reality as the Plague continued and people were exposed to corpses, imagery of death became prevalent in art, often defined by new styles of ultra-realism mixed with the metaphoric imagery of hell or representations of mortality, an exploration of which was already gaining popularity in art beforehand (DesOrmeaux, 2007).
Other forms of art experienced significant change as a result of Black Death as well including in areas of literature, printed work, architecture, and sculpture/crafting. Similar to visual arts, literature took upon a comedic or allegorical tone during the Plague such as with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and then shifted to a darker reflection after the Plague. In architecture, the plague inspired two distinct directions of elaborating the gothic style and prominence of Greco-Roman style – both with expressions of verticality and emotion with ultra-realism present (Stokstad & Cothren, 2018). The culture at the time was characterized by the antithesis of elegance and happiness leading up to the plague, and replaced with morbidity, resulting in the rise of an artistic genre of allegory known as Danse Macabre or the Dance of Death. This allegory often demonstrated by the use of skeleton figures, personification of death, among everyday activities or scenes were seen virtually everywhere including paintings, sculpture, frescoes, books, and printed works. One of the most famous images is The Dance of Death by Michael Wolgemut in 1493 (DesOrmeaux, 2007).
References
DesOrmeaux, A.L. (2007). The Black Death and its effect on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century art [Master’s Thesis, Louisiana State University]. LSU Digital Commons. Web.
Stokstad, M., & Cothren, M. W. (2018). Art history vol. 1 (6th ed.). Pearson.