The Art and the Pestilence. Since Middle Ages to XIX th, since Mythology from Local Reality

Abstract

The impact of the epidemics in history is verifiable from all the scopes of intellectual and man´s artistic production. The painting, besides to become echo of these disasters, constitutes one of the most interesting sources to come near to the interpretation given to such by the different societies, leaving glimpsing data of historical rigor as well as elements included within the complex world of the mentalities. The black plague undergone by Europe in second half of century XIV, supposes a point of flexion in the representation of the death, that in form of skeleton or phantasmagoric being prevails on the life, being perpetuated this vision until the century of the Eight hundred.