Black Death art, Black Death and art, paintings from the Black Death era

Art has always been the vision of society, expressing and chronicling everything it goes through, regardless of the surrounding circumstances, good or bad. Artists have touched on all eras, and one of the most exciting of them is the period of the Black Death or the era of epidemics, which artists expressed in works of art as an expression of the period difficult which once and for all How once and how did the plagues affect life? Through these works we see the artists how they viewed this plague and a look at what the world experienced during this time.

What is the Black Death?

The Black Death was an epidemic that plagued Europe between 1347 and 1352 AD. It spread widely and became a global epidemic. During the same period, similar epidemics spread across Asia and the Middle East. Death due to the appearance of hemorrhagic spots under the skin which tended to black. It caused the death of millions and a third of the population of the European continent, making it one of the most horrific epidemics in history. This period greatly affected life. many people, including artists.

Black Death Art:

The expression of the cause of the Black Death for artists was divided and, from the point of view of religious context, they interpreted it as an wrath of God and a warning to society, especially to the guilty. Artists expressed this in their paintings, while others tended to combat these beliefs and encouraged to motivate the sick and the victims' families, with drawings that depicted the epidemic as something disgusting and evil, or drawings that encourage people to confront the epidemic, like the drawings of doctors, who help the sick as a way of restoring hope.

Artists' desire to create increases in difficult times, to the point that they feel that what they do has more meaning and more power. Therefore, their works carry greater intimacy and more feeling. Through these paintings we get a glimpse of what the circumstances were like at that time, and this is one of the most inspiring paintings. It speaks to the cruelty of what people experienced at that time and is considered one of the paintings that most expresses the ferocity of the Black Death.

Painting The Triumph of Death:

The painting is titled The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and depicts the Black Death approaching a European village. She expresses how she affected everything, such as the fires burning in the forest behind her, and this is an indication of the great difficulties the religion faced in disposing of corpses, which caused unintentional fires, a barren and charred land. , as well as a new jet and skeletal structures, a sea full of ships expresses restlessness and an attempt to escape.

The most important feature of the painting, which the artist wanted to convey, is that the Black Death greatly affected everyone, despite the class that prevailed at that time. We see the common people, the soldiers, the farmers, the nobles, even the monarch and cardinal, all in one place, destined for the same fate. Death's victory doesn't matter about your status or money. Nothing, he could protect you. The face was very expressive and conveyed unfortunate events to see, but it was the reality of what people were experiencing at the time.

Plague painting in Ashdod:

The painting entitled The Plague in Ashdod by the artist Nicolas Poussin expresses one of the most widespread beliefs of the time, according to which any work dealing with the plague as a subject will be affected by some form of the Black Death, or even the plague itself or its physical consequences, and these are beliefs that many believed in at the time. The painting represents people. They looked away and covered their noses because they thought the breath and smell were contagious.

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