“Hope and Healing” at WAM
By Leon Nigrosh
 May
2005 -W see a show of old Italian paintings about the Black Death?
More importantly, why would a small group of experts and learned curators
spend more than four years researching and assembling such an exhibit?
Well, the answers are currently on display in the Worcester Art Museum’s
major exhibition entitled “Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in
a time of Plague, 1500-1800.” This magnificent show has 37 Baroque
and Renaissance-era pieces borrowed from as far away as London, Los Angeles,
and New Orleans.
These works meander through seven main categories in the speciall designed
and decorated galleries fashioned to create an uplifting mood around all
the brilliantly colored paintings. This is also the first time in a while
that the museum has created an audio tour to help visitors understand
the complexities of each work.
One could easily whisk through this collection admiring the colors, the
use of light, the delineation of the subjects and the scale of many of
the paintings. Or a visitor could take the time to examine each work,
read the accompanying didactic panels, listen to the audio tour –
and in the process discover far more about the people of the time, the
nature of the plagues (there were at least three during the 300 year period),
and how these artworks were produced and used to combat the ever-present
threat and horror of disease.
The paintings in this show were chosen not only to show the death and
devastation rampant throughout Italy during the time, but also to represent
symbols of hope and the gratitude of survivors. The first section of the
exhibit contains works that depict earlier plagues from Biblical times
to the 15th century. My personal favorite in this section is Giovanni
Martinelli’s (1604-59) “Memento Mori (Death Comes to the Dinner
Table),” showing a group of elegantly dressed young men and women
of the time enjoying a robust meal of fruits and pastries that is suddenly
interrupted by a skeleton holding an hourglass in the shadows. Translated,
the title says, “Remember, you shall die,” and the picture
is a reminder of the suddenness with which plague could arrive and strike
rich and poor alike.
In the next part of the exhibit, Francesco de Mura’s (1696-1782)
painting of a mother breast-feeding is a depiction of hope in times of
travail. The bird plucking its chest to feed its own blood to its chicks
was a potent symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice. In the area that features
works depicting Saint Sebastian, we learn that the arrows with which he
is shot (ranging from a single shaft to a pincushion full) were symbols
of the plague’s swift action.
Sebastian was commonly shown next to the French Saint Roch, pointing to
his exposed leg. This sight was known to all as signifying his survival
of the plague – his leg free of the buboes that were symptomatic
of the Bubonic Plague.
In other sections, there are works that relate to Saint Charles and the
Cult of the Nail, to Saint Rosalie, and to the appearance of Saint John
of God to a sick teenager. All of the works in the show are vivid in color,
sensational in aspect, dramatic and lush. The images were originally produced
to delight the eye, capture the viewers’ attention and send an important
message – that with all of the darkness around, there was always
hope in a higher power. Three hundred years later, they still accomplish
their task.
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