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BLACK PLAGUE
The Black Death arrived on European shores in 1348. By 1350, the year it retreated, it had felled a quarter to half of the region’s population. In 1362, 1368, and 1381, it struck again—as it would periodically well into the 18th century.
The contemporary Sienese chronicler, Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, described its terror. A victim first experiences flu-like symptoms, and then sees a “swell beneath their armpits and in their groins.” Agnolo himself buried his five children with his own hands. He also lost his wife.
From Khan Academy, "The Black Death" (www.kahnacademy.org)
Unknown artist, The Triumph of Death, (Palermo)1440-45
Benedetto Bonfigli, Madonna della Misericordia (aka Plague Madonna), 1464
Pierro della Francesco, Polyptych of the Misericordia, 1445-62
Josse Lieferinxe, Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken, 1497-99
Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, 1480
Paulus Furst of Nuremberg, Doctor Schnabel von Rom, 1656
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