Plague (painting)

Painting by Arnold Böcklin

Plague

Artist| Arnold Böcklin
Year| 1898
Type| tempera on wood
Location| Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel

Plague is an 1898 painting in tempera by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin, held in the Kunstmuseum Basel. It exemplifies the artist's obsession with nightmares of war, pestilence and death. The painting shows Death riding on a bat-like winged creature who travels through a street in a medieval European town.

Plague is rendered mostly using shades of pale green, a colour often associated with decomposition. The other predominant tones are black and dull browns; for example, in the clothes worn by the figures shown in the mid-ground and background as they dive for safety before Death's path. The red cloth of the woman shown in the mid-foreground is the only vivid colour seen; she lies across the corpse of a woman who was also cut down.

## Sources

[edit]

* Eco, Umberto. On Ugliness. Rizzoli, 2007. ISBN 0-8478-2986-3

* v
* t
* e

Arnold Böcklin

Paintings|

* List of paintings
* Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle (1872)
* Roger Freeing Angelica (1873)
* Spring Evening (1879)
* The Sanctuary of Hercules (1884)
* Isle of the Dead (1880–1901)
* The Homecoming (1887)
* War (1896)
* Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896)
* Plague (1898)

Related|

* Arnold Böcklin
* Vier Tondichtungen nach A. Böcklin (four poems songs)

* v
* t
* e

Death and mortality in art

Themes|

* All flesh is grass
* Carpe diem
* Consolatio
* Danse Macabre
* Death and the Maiden
* Lamentation of Christ
* Macabre
* Memento mori
* Mono no aware
* Sic transit gloria mundi
* Ubi sunt
* Personifications of death
* Vanitas

Forms|

* Death mask
* Elegy
* Funerary art
* Funerary text
* Lament
* Memorial
* Mummy
* Post-mortem photography
* Requiem
* Tomb
* Tragedy
* Wreath

Artwork|

| Architecture|

* Capuchin Crypt
* Catacombs of Paris
* Sedlec Ossuary
* Capuchin catacombs of palermo

|

Film|

* The Seventh Seal

Literature|

* Ars moriendi
* Bardo Thodol
* Book of Job
* Book of the Dead
* Left Ginza
* Hamlet's soliloquy
* The Masque of the Red Death

Music|

* Danse macabre
* Death and Transfiguration
* Der Tod und das Mädchen
* Erlkönig
* Totentanz

Painting|

* Et in Arcadia ego
* Guercino
* Poussin
* Death and Fire
* Death and Life
* Death and the Maiden
* Death and the Miser
* Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
* La Calavera Catrina
* Plague
* Pyramid of Skulls
* Roman Widow
* Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
* Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
* Sleep and His Half-Brother Death
* The Ambassadors
* The Garden of Death
* The Shadow of Death
* The Three Ages of Man and Death
* The Triumph of Death

Poetry|

* "And death shall have no dominion"
* "Because I could not stop for Death"
* "Erlkönig"
* "Do not go gentle into that good night"

This article about a nineteenth-century painting is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

|

* v
* t
* e

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template