Venetian Stories

Episode 21 — The Plague Doctor

Painting from the 1490s of a religious procession in Piazza San Marco, with the words Venetian Stories across

Written and presented by

René Seindal
Venetian Stories
Venetian Stories
Episode 21 — The Plague Doctor
Loading
/

The plague doctor, long black cloak, pointy fingers, beaked mask with empty eyes. A giant black raven, the harbinger of a terrible death.

We all know that image. It is part of our culture and mythology. That was how medieval plague doctors looked, right?

Well, guess who didn’t know about the beaked plague doctor? The plague doctors of the 1500s and 1600s didn’t know about the beaked plague doctor.

Yet, they were him. Or were they?

Read the full transcript.

Links

Newsletters

History Walks website

Images of the plague doctor

Engraving showing the figure of the plague doctor, cloaked, hooded with a mask with a long bird-like beak. He wears a wide brimmed hat, and carries a stick. This is the earliest known image of a plague doctor, published in Rome in 1656.
Sebastiano Zecchini — Roma e Perugia 1656
Engraving showing the figure of the plague doctor, cloaked, hooded with a mask with a long bird-like beak. He wears a wide brimmed hat, and carries a stick. This is a copy of the Roman image from the same year, with the text written in German, French and Latin.
Gerhard Altzenbach — Germany 1656
Engraving showing the figure of the plague doctor, cloaked, hooded with a mask with a long bird-like beak. He wears a wide brimmed hat, and carries a stick. The figure has very pointed fingers, and at the end of the stick is a winged hourglass — a _memento mori_ indicating that time flies and death is near. This is a copy of the Roman image from the same year, but with a satirical and hostile tone. The text in mixed German and Latin exposes the doctors as avaricious harbingers of death.
Paulus Fürst — Germany 1656
Watercolour of the plague doctor, by Giovanni Grevembroch.
Grevembroch — Venezia c. .1750

Bibliography

  • Ardizzone, Fabrizio. Ricordi di Fabritio Ardizzone fisico intorno al preseruarsi, e curarsi dalla peste. In Genova per Gio. Maria Farroni, 1656. 🔗
  • Benedetti, Rocco. Noui auisi di Venetia, ne quali si contengono tutti i casi miserabili, che in quella, al tempo della peste sono occorsi …. In Urbino appresso Battista de Bartoli Vinitiano, 1577. [more] 🔗
  • Muratori, Lodovico Antonio. Del governo della peste, e delle maniere di guardarsene, trattato di Lodovico Antonio Muratori … diviso in politico, medico, et ecclesiastico. In Modena : per Bartolomeo Soliani, 1714.
  • Pona, Francesco. Il gran contagio di Verona nel milleseicento, e trenta. Descritto da Francesco Pona. In Verona per Bartolomio Merlo. Stampator camerale, 1631. 🔗
  • Rondinelli, Francesco. Relazione del contagio stato in Firenze l'anno 1630. e 1633. In Fiorenza per Gio. Batista Landini, 1634.
Fediverse reactions

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *