Notes on some plague paintings

THE MOST famous paintings and designs depicting bubonic plague have at times been criticized for a certain lack of clinical veracity, because they do not show lesions which would make recognition of the disease possible.' One can, of course, look approvingly at a plague bubo prominently displayed, admittedly on the thigh instead of in the groin, in respresentations of St. Roch,2 one of the patron saints of plague victims, and conclude that its painter and the commissioning authority, the Church, had in mind the same "plague" which we now know to be produced by Pasteurella pestis. The comprehensive work on the plague as a source of artistic inspiration by Brossolet and Mollaret of the Pasteur Institute in Paris" shows a number of works of art that do justice to the disease in the same manner. However, artists like Raphael, Rubens, Poussin, and others have created their renowned plague paintings and designs with the genuine intention of depicting this disease, but without showing a single plague bubo. This omission can in some cases be explained by aesthetic considerations. The overall effect of a classical work would be disturbed by a repulsive sight. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)4 wrote in his De pictura: "The ancients painted the portrait of Antigonos (one of his eyes being blind) only from the side of his face where the eye was not lacking... ." "It is said that Pericles' head was long and ugly, for this reason he-unlike others-was portrayed by painters and sculptors wearing a helmet." This kind of veiling technique would be easy in the case of plague representations where the axillary and inguinal sites of lesions were usually covered. But if paintings did not show the most distinctive feature of the disease, what others did they represent? It is well known that, far from observing contemporary plague