Infectious disease has long remained widely misunderstood. Before we knew exactly how disease was contracted, spread and cured, socio-cultural forces attempted to provide explanations that reflected their own biases. As a result, bodily disease became synonymous with pollution, shame, dishonor and sin. Often this conflation of bodily sickness and character had direct implications on social status. In addition, people of different social classes suffered and experienced disease differently.
Countless works in the canon of western art from the middle ages until now have depicted the relationship between the the diseased body and its maladies, confronting beliefs about those who suffered from them. These beliefs have been fraught with anxieties about contagion and societal degeneration. Anthropologist Mary Douglas notes in the late 1960s that “it is not difficult to see how pollution beliefs can be used in a dialogue of claims and counterclaims to status…. I believe that some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order.” To supplement this claim and ground it in the visual arts, we can look to art historian Louise Marshall, who said in 1994: “In setting up hierarchical relationships of mutual obligation between worshiper and image, those who lived during the pandemic were not neurotic and helpless, but were taking positive-and in their eyes effective-steps to regain control over their environment.” Following this train of thought, the artwork here can uncover these preoccupations with social order by unraveling the hierarchical representations of the diseased human body in western art.
Anonymous
St Benedict Healing a Leper, 11th Century
Fresco
Basement (Excavation of original church) San Crisogono Church in Rome
Dimensions Unknown
Pope Gregory, (540-604) immortalized St Benedict in part two of his four dialogues, The Life of Benedict. This fresco, created more than 500 years after his death, would likely have pleased the Pope, for it provides visual reinforcement of church doctrine in a time of mass Illiteracy.
The golden orb that crowns St. Benedict’s head indicates God-given power. Here, hierarchies are present in spatial, gestural and bodily representations. St. Benedict, upright in his stance, stretches two fingers towards the forehead of the shorter, leprous figure on his left. In Judeo-Christian terms, left is the space reserved for the sinful and unholy. Is the leper’s physical affliction a condition of his inherent sin?
The contrast between these two figures is striking. We see what is pure and what must be cast out, what is sacred and what is defiled, what is of the heavens and what inhabits inferior space, what is powerful and what is weak. The leper’s slight figure, his meek head tilted toward his healer, his right hand in a gesture of heavenly praise, and his humble eyes welcome the promise of a cure; all of these signals denote submission and a lowly concept of self. The leper is a leper and nothing else, his identity remains anonymous.
Masaccio
St Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow, 1425
Fresco
Brancacci Chapel, Florence
91 in x 64 in
Continuing in the vein of sacred gold of St. benedict’s halo, in this work, the robe of St. Peter denotes his status as a divine being. We see a move away from the flatness of previous eras to one-point perspective, an optical refinement pioneered in Masaccio’s time. St Peter’s gaze does not move in the direction of the sick, as if he were a New Yorker avoiding the homeless en route to the bodega on the corner. The sick remain anonymous to Peter. In spite of this, the shadow he casts has been imbued with healing powers. Masaccio utilizes one-point perspective effectively; we feel as if the apostle will walk out of the canvas and perhaps his shadow will fall on us.
Josse Lieferinxe
St Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken, 1497
Oil on wood
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
32 3/16 in x 21 13/16 in
This is one painting in a series of seven for which Lieferinxe was commissioned by The Confraternity of St. Sebastian. Lieferinxe has been christened in history books as the Master of St. Sebastian because of his extensive work on the mythological Christian figure. These works once resided in the now destroyed Church of Notre-Dame-des-Accoules in the city of Marseilles.
In a time when disease decimated millions, St. Sebastian became the icon for protection against the plague. Here we see many moments occurring simultaneously; the foreground features a funerary scene where deceased plague victims are being heaped into an unmarked, mass grave. Behind them, a gravedigger falls ill with his right hand in the same gesture of praise as the leper in St Benedict.There is a palpable anxiety in the open mouths of both the fallen gravedigger and the woman with the outstretched palms in the left middle ground.
Sebastian kneels in supplication at the feet of the divine in the upper ground of the painting, Sebastian’s identity is marked by the arrows that sealed his fate as a martyr in his human life, the punctures reminiscent of the wounds and lesions of the leper in St. Benedict Heals a Leper. In her essay, Manipulating the Sacred: Image and Plague in Renaissance Italy, art scholar Louise Marshall observes:
“Sebastian's martyrdom by the arrows of the plague becomes a vicarious sacrifice offered up to God. Christ-like, he takes the sins of humanity upon himself and makes restitution for these sins with his own sufferings...Sebastian places himself as willing victim between his worshipers and a punitive deity, accepting the divinely-sent plague arrows in his own body Sebastian acts as a living "lightning rod," drawing the plague arrows away from humanity and "grounding" them harmlessly in his own flesh.”
Yet, the anxious citizens in the painting seem unaware that St. Sebastian is intervening on their behalf. The source of this plague is clearly the faceless, wrapped bodies coming to them from the shadowy outskirts of the horizon. These bodies are both marked and unmarked, they are guilty and yet remain anonymous.
Anonymous
Job Covered in Boils, 1525.
from Martin Luther’s Bible: The Book of Job
Woodcut.
Dallas Museum
5 ⅝ in x 6 in
Found in an early 16th century Luther Bible, this woodcut print reiterates certain synonyms of disease and plague that we have seen in the artworks before. Job is the quintessential innocent victim who has been through a series of devastating life events, including being stricken with poverty and developing boils, yet refuses to renounce God. Job’s story has been a vehicle through which to instill order and unquestioning devotion in the face of economic misfortune and physical suffering.
In this woodcut, gesturing hands are key, just as we saw in St. Benedict Heals a Leper and St Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken. Notice two of Job’s visitors on the left; facing their palms out in praise, making reference to the upper realms, to the divine God. The woman closest to Job clenches her lavish gown to keep it from touching the filth beneath her feet. The woman looks down at Job with pity, but it is hard to ignore her luxurious headdress and elegantly styled hair. She seems terrified that his sickness may rub off on her, that his misfortune might befall her.
Job sits, a mere cloth covering his groin, his naked body is a symbol of his poverty, his boils denigrating his power, his status as a virile man. Here, the diseased has a dignified and honorable name.
Justus Sustermans
Ferdinando II de Medici, 1626
Oil on canvas
16 9/10 in x 13 in
This work represents a paradigm shift in the depiction of the diseased. This is a portrait of a real life, secular figure of the Florentine elite, Fernando II de’ Medici. Ferdinando assumed the title of grand duke of Florence just one year after this portrait was done, at the age of 16. Sustermans was working as court painter for the Medici family at the time he created this painting, so this unflattering image of his employer’s son is striking. Could this type of representation be seen as an insult to the subject’s social standing?
Sustermans emphasizes the grotesque manifestations of smallpox: the bubbling pustules of the skin on the face, the eyes unable to open because of the gathering of pox on the eyelids and the involuntary open mouth that signals that the rash has spread to the inside of the throat, making it hard to breathe.
The images that have dominated the western canon up until this point have portrayed infectious disease as the province of the lower classes. This work is emblematic, not just in its departure from Christian mythologies, but also for daring to show that elite can also suffer from these stigmatized ailments. Whether this display of the powerful with illness was intentional remains uncertain, but some have speculated that Ferdinand’s survival of smallpox was symbolic of his virility as a man and political prowess. So, unlike Job’s boils, which symbolize impotence, Ferdinando’s pockmarks are symbols of his strength. This strength is accentuated by the formality of the painting, with Ferdinando’s upright stance, traditional red garment and the crisp white shirt that lies underneath it.
Ferdinando has been invested with the power to overcome his own illness without the intervention of the divine, and thus becomes both victim and conqueror in one human body.
Rembrandt van Rijn
Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse, 1665-1667
Oil on Canvas
44 ⅜ in x 34 1/2 in
Rembrandt’s Portrait of Gerard de Lairesse adds to the exploration of the grotesque, and he continues with Sustermans’ theme in Ferdinando de Medici’s portrait by displaying it heroically. It is jarring to imagine that the sitter is only twenty-five years old at the time of this portrait. The formality of Lairesse’s’ costume is striking, between his velvety waistcoat, his wide lace collar, and his gleaming white cuffs, the viewer gets a sense of his opulence and his high position on the social ladder.
The curly locks of his hair, although seemingly thin, boast his youth and masculinity. Notice his right hand tucked in his waistcoat; this pose indicates a quiet but firm authority. Judging by the papers the subject is holding in his lap, we can see that he is literate. The shadows cast on the side of his face create a sense of contemplation and depth.
And yet, his face is disfigured. His saddle nose (a common symptom of tertiary syphilis) is a mark of his shame, symbolizing his ‘sin’ and bodily corruption. Rembrandt, however does not treat this deformity with indifference, but rather as a mark of dignity, evidenced by the fact that this portrait is composed like any other. Thus, the artist demands that Lairesse be seen respectably by juxtaposing his marks of stigma against his symbols of virtue.
Francisco Goya
Plague Hospital,1798-1800
Oil on Canvas
22 1/2 in x 12 4/5 in
Goya’s work here immortalizes the real life tragedy of the yellow fever outbreaks of 1800 in Seville, Spain. Nowhere present is there a lone sufferer, as in the previous two paintings, and perhaps we can attribute this to social status. In times of sickness, people of higher social status were tended to in the comfort of their own rooms.
In the work itself, we can see the muddy color palate impart a dinginess to the room, evoking a haunting, mystical and elusive atmosphere. The faceless bodies recall the mummified and indistinguishable bodies of plague victims in Lieferinxe’s St. Sebastian.
An effusive light enters from the center of the frame, serving as the main focal point. Rays of light fight to reach beyond our victims in the foreground. This further accentuates the somber reality of this scene, suggesting that life, here, is hanging on by a thread. The cloud of pale light that filters through the window eludes to the infectious air, the miasmic mass that makes breathing appear precarious, if not downright lethal.
Notice in the lower portion of the painting the crowding of limp and sprawling bodies with indistinguishable facial features. A body has fallen face down on the right, emphasizing the despair of plague. Goya is interested in highlighting the way the poor experience disease: condemned, feared, hopeless and anonymous. Toxic vapor emanates from their bodies; the bodies are culpable in the spread of this plague. Is poverty the disease that could be caught?
AA Bronson
Felix Partz, June 5, 1994,1999
Lacquer on vinyl
84 x 168 in.
Courtesy of the Artist.
In order to initially grasp the weight of this work, it is crucial to quote the artist who created it. A.A. Bronson reveals how this portrait came to be in an interview published by online art periodical, Art Practical in 2012:
“It’s a digital print, but it’s printed with paint. The original photo was taken three hours after he died, and there’s so little flesh. He didn’t really have any illnesses beyond AIDS, so he just wasted away. There wasn’t enough flesh left to close his eyes, which is why they’re open. As he got closer to death, he surrounded himself with more and more color and more and more pattern, which is why the aesthetics come into play; they’re really his aesthetics. They’re how he presented himself to his friends in the last two weeks before he died.”
When gay men started to get sick and die from AIDS in the early 1980s, a lack of understanding led to little being done. People suffered anonymously. Conservatives reasoned that HIV/AIDS was restitution for living a sinful life of homosexuality. Before it was known how the disease was contracted, there was widespread paranoia to the point where healthcare workers refused to treat HIV/AIDS patients. Felix died just before life saving anti-retroviral treatment was available, along with almost 300,000 in the U.S. alone.
There’s a brilliance in color and shape in this image that recalls Gustav Klimt's elegant portraits of women at the turn of the 20th century. The quiet yet pervasive dignity of this tragic image recalls Lieferinxe portrait of de Medici. AA Bronson is reminding us that regardless of the subject’s corroded and emaciated human figure, he must be considered with respect. The tension here lies between the tangible and intangible; evoking the idea of memory and how we choose to remember those who have perished, how we may glorify or idealize them. Notice how the golden pillow frames Felix’s head, just like the halo of St. Benedict. Perhaps Felix is a modern-day saint, his death serving as a sacrifice to benefit many others that subsequently suffer from this illness. His death is not symbolic of restitution for sin, but rather of the fight for dignity.
