Day 16 - The Black Death

14th Century Italy experience great economic success as numerous city-states that where centers of manufacturing of arms or textiles, maritime trade, and banking. All the states shared in the prosperity during this period.  During this golden age the arts flourished and took on some of the The eruption of the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death in the late 1340s decimated the population with death tolls as high as 50 to 60 percent of the population. and threatened the economic prosperity of the time.  It spread from China and ravaged all of Europe.  In areas that were spared or not as greatly effected, the survivors experience new prosperity and new opportunities but not before they experience a marked decline in the wake of the Plague.

The Black Death had a great effect on the way people lived and saw life, it also changed the predominant art of the times which became devotional images, religious bequests with much focus on sickness and death.  There was also a new live in the moment way that people started to view life.  Being able to enjoy what life they had left with such bleak odds against them was a way to take the mind off the horrendous disease.

Much of the art after the outbreak of the Plague became stiff and flat, seemingly to wipe out all of the advances made during the early part of the 14th century.  Historians feel that the ones left were less developed in their art and viewed the world in a more removed way due to the horror and death surrounding them.  Their contemporaries were falling all around them and this had a profound psychological effect on art as those who witnessed this dark period were left with a sense of survivors guilt.

This time also marked a wider trend of growing discontent with the church in the aftermath of the Black Death.  People felt the clergy was ineffective and saw them fall like everyone else, this led them to seek out a more personal relationship with God.  This was especially widespread since many assumed the church held no favor with God and saw the epidemic as a form of punishment from above.

Image of the suffering caused by the Black Death

References:
1. Gardner's Art Through the Ages - A Global History, by Fred S. Kleiner; Chapter 19
2. http://faculty.cua.edu/Pennington/ChurchHistory220/LectureTen/BlackDeath/Art%20page%201.htm
3. http://socyberty.com/history/the-black-death-and-the-decline-of-the-influence-of-the-catholic-church/