The Dance of Death

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These are Dance of Death pictures by the 19th century British artist Thomas Rowlandson. The Dance of Death genre, which first appeared in the 15th century as a reaction to the Black Death, featured the figure of Death coming to claim its victims. Sometimes they were a reminder that death comes to us all, but often they were little morality tales about the end waiting for the debauched.

These images, and those after the jump, art taken from Everything Old is New Again's post The English Dance of Death: Thomas Rowlandson’s Scathing Memento Mori 1814-1816. There are more examples there, as well was the captions that accompanied the illustrations.

Thomas Rowlandson

Wuhan Virus art

Illustration by Masashi Shimakawa

In my earlier post Plague Art I posted some old artwork from the Black Death and other historical pandemics. I opined that modern Plague Art might be scenes of the frenzied rush on the toilet paper aisle, but I had forgotten facemasks.

The image is by Masashi Shimakawa (I showed other of his work in the earlier post Illustrations of every day Japan by Masashi Shimakawa). I think it really isn't Wuhan Virus art because, as near as I can tell from the Google translation of the IG post it came from, it is actually an illustration from an article(?) called "Slapping the Door". I've repurposed it as plague art none-the-less.

Plague art

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Whelp, with the Wuhan virus upon us it is time to visit older pandemics via art. These images, and those after the jump, are primarily of the Black Death, but there are a few other plagues tossed in for good measure. Hopefully, if we're lucky, future Wuhan Flu art will only be of rushes on the toilet paper aisle and not stacks of dead bodies.

Plagues and Pestilence

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Deadly pandemics are a feature of living that the West, largely through vastly improved sanitation, have reduced over the last Century. Still, as this list of Cholera outbreaks shows, outbreaks still bloom from time to time.

Being such a feared aspect of life, plagues, pestilence and death by disease were naturally a subject of art. Here, and below the fold, are a few examples of such art.