Black Death and How It Changed Art in the 14th and 15th Centuries

1111 Words5 Pages
Black Death and how it changed art in the 14th and 15th centuries . I believe that the eruption of Black Death (bubonic plague) in the 14th century was partially responsible in the shift in art and the style of art during the period. Around the 1340s Black Death took a toll on the people of prosperous European continent. Faced with losses in 25-50% of Europe’s population much of the art was stimulated by the mortality of this occurrence. (Benedictow, 2005) The Black Death was more than a medieval explosion of horror: it kept coming back. For the next 300 years and longer, plague became a regular part of life and death in Europe. Literature as well as the Plague art as we will call it from this point on showed glimpses of morbidity and showed the fascination with the macabre. Most of the plague art was that stimulated by religious bequests and encouraged the commissioning of devotional pieces. The renaissance humanism movement brought about by a vernacular literature adopted by Giovanni Boccaccio which helped paint a picture of what life was like in Europe during the Black Death. “This famous description of the Black Death appears in The Decameron, written by the Florentine humanist Giovanni Boccaccio, who goes on to describe the course of the rapidly fatal disease and also the speed with which the dead were buried. Boccaccio's descriptions of the pandemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe in the mid-fourteenth century highlight not only the horrors of the disease but also the inability of anyone, regardless of status, to escape it.”(Metmusem, 2013) Many suffered and art was not changed immediately it was more of a gradual change. Due to the excessive loss of life the labor force in Europe was greatly diminished this brought about higher wages for the existing workers and better rates. But the great constructions of the past were not possible with
Open Document