Old Woman Plague and the Black Death
Jun. 14th, 2007 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baleanopteraI have done a post about some of these images before, but the whole Death-theme over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
told_tales gave it new relevance. So I've added lots more images, and some text which ended up expanding the post quite a bit.
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In Norway there are many legends and stories about the Black Death. They all usually start with: "The Black Death came to Norway in 1348, and when it left there was hardly a person alive"
My favourite story was the one later illustrated by Theodore Kittelsen, and it goes something like this; During the Black Death the plague took the shape of an old woman, who hobbled from village to village, farm to farm. She’d be in old, raggedy clothes and carried a rake and a broom. If you saw her use the rake that meant that some of the people in the area would die. If she used the broom then everyone, yourself included, would be swept away.
The old woman was called Plague or Old Woman Plague. She smelled of death, dust and nothingness.
The title of this painting is "Mother, there is an old woman coming" - and for me at least that title makes the images even worse.
Old Woman Plague would sweep each nook and corner. She was practical and patience.
You could not hide....
Where she was finished there was nothing left except desolation...
..despair...
...death...
..and deserted farms. This shows the tree that would be planted before the main house on all Norwegian farms. The tree was usually taken as a sign of how the farm was doing. A large and green tree meant a prosperous farm. Here the tree is dark and the nest amongst its branches is abandoned.
In some placed the death toll was so high that whole communities were wiped out. This image is called "The Old Church". Its based on a story of a hunter, a hundred years after the plague, and how he was deep in forest hunting. He fired a shot and a strange clang was heard - as if he had hit metal. He went to investigate and it turned out he had shot the church bell of an old church whose community had all been wiped out by the plague. So many people had died that everyone had simply forgotten the place.
He went into the church and there before the altar was a sleeping bear - and that is what is shown in this painting. The bear attacked but the hunter managed to kill it.
Later the hunter got the nearest priest to re-open the church. And the bear? Its skin was hung on the wall near the alter - it's still there today.
Such was the trail left by Old Woman Plague.
She came to a country filled with people, and left a desolate place where nature had retaken the land. This shows a Capercallie, which is known in Norwegian as a Tiur or a 'trollbird'. It was said to be represent the trolls and hags, and those that dwelt below.
Kittelsen used the bird to symbolise the darkness and uncertainty of the land after the plague.
There was nothing you could do against Old Woman Plague. You could not barter, you could not beg - you could just hope that someday she would leave....
cross-posted totold_tales
told_tales gave it new relevance. So I've added lots more images, and some text which ended up expanding the post quite a bit.In Norway there are many legends and stories about the Black Death. They all usually start with: "The Black Death came to Norway in 1348, and when it left there was hardly a person alive"
My favourite story was the one later illustrated by Theodore Kittelsen, and it goes something like this; During the Black Death the plague took the shape of an old woman, who hobbled from village to village, farm to farm. She’d be in old, raggedy clothes and carried a rake and a broom. If you saw her use the rake that meant that some of the people in the area would die. If she used the broom then everyone, yourself included, would be swept away.
The old woman was called Plague or Old Woman Plague. She smelled of death, dust and nothingness.
The title of this painting is "Mother, there is an old woman coming" - and for me at least that title makes the images even worse.
Old Woman Plague would sweep each nook and corner. She was practical and patience.
You could not hide....
Where she was finished there was nothing left except desolation...
..despair...
...death...
..and deserted farms. This shows the tree that would be planted before the main house on all Norwegian farms. The tree was usually taken as a sign of how the farm was doing. A large and green tree meant a prosperous farm. Here the tree is dark and the nest amongst its branches is abandoned.
In some placed the death toll was so high that whole communities were wiped out. This image is called "The Old Church". Its based on a story of a hunter, a hundred years after the plague, and how he was deep in forest hunting. He fired a shot and a strange clang was heard - as if he had hit metal. He went to investigate and it turned out he had shot the church bell of an old church whose community had all been wiped out by the plague. So many people had died that everyone had simply forgotten the place.
He went into the church and there before the altar was a sleeping bear - and that is what is shown in this painting. The bear attacked but the hunter managed to kill it.
Later the hunter got the nearest priest to re-open the church. And the bear? Its skin was hung on the wall near the alter - it's still there today.
Such was the trail left by Old Woman Plague.
She came to a country filled with people, and left a desolate place where nature had retaken the land. This shows a Capercallie, which is known in Norwegian as a Tiur or a 'trollbird'. It was said to be represent the trolls and hags, and those that dwelt below.
Kittelsen used the bird to symbolise the darkness and uncertainty of the land after the plague.
There was nothing you could do against Old Woman Plague. You could not barter, you could not beg - you could just hope that someday she would leave....
cross-posted to
told_tales
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 06:56 pm (UTC)That makes perfect sense. In a way it might be compared with the xylographic illustrations Ludwig Richter designed for Ludwig Bechstein's fairy tale collection in 1853/57. They were the most popular fairy tale illustrations for decades and at the same time they were considered to be genuinely German ("volkstümlich"). The reception of certain artists is sometimes nearly as thrilling as art itself: tells a lot about the wishes and ideas of the reviewing society/culture.
It's strange (and sad) how little art history has been written on topics that does not relate to the "typical" European countries (Italy, France, Germany, etc.), even Ireland is a step child in art history. When I visited Krakow I saw a lot of really fascinating works of Polish artists of the late 19th century. And the museums shops did not even had a catalogue in English. I was so disappointed, because the language barrier makes these topics nearly unavailable for me. And that's only one example... It's really a shame, that Munch is the only artist that comes to my mind, when I think of Norwegian art. And I remember a conversation with fellow art historian students about Scandinavian art in general and they summarized it: well, there is not much to talk about. *head-desk* So much arrogance is really annoying. Do I have to mention that one of them specialised on Italian Baroque painting. Is there anything more traditional to do?
A rather nostalgic one. I love the Arthurian legends since I was a small child, reading the comic books of Prince Valiant and other related stuff etc. I simply liked the imagery, I think: the idea of noble warriors having glorious adventures. As the Arthurian legends (mostly around the love triangle Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot)is covered by a lot of literature, I was looking for something less popular and more German and ended by Gottfried von Straßburg's Tristan. I wanted to focus on German art first, but did not find enough material and most of the works were highly influenced by Richard Wagner. So I took Great Britain instead and was rather happy about this, because so I could work on English art as well which I am still very interested in. Beardsley's drawings to Malory's Morte D'Arthur (that's the text source for Tristan in the UK) are simply fantastic...
How did you come to be so interested in the German Wilhelmine epoch or in German art in general???
I think that's exactly the point. Watching these works of art the viewer knows that he does not see reality but a "Inszenierung". He does not pseudo-witness a political event that is presented by means of realism as in the paintings of Anton von Werner or Ilija Repin, etc. And so he can indulge in this most theatrically production. In the "realistic" political paintings the "Inszenierung" (I don't know the English term for this)is more subtle. I think in these cases the visual mechanics are better compared to the propaganda messages in modern war films. Do you know, what I mean? I haven't had time to read your post on war films. I don't like this genre much, I cannot handle the patriotism and war-enthusiasm that is somehow always there. It scares me. 300, though not really a war film, was full of this pseudo-heroic rant.
( Oh, it is. Believe me. But frightening as well, considering the future and the disputation... Better not going there :-))
no subject
Date: 2007-09-27 08:38 pm (UTC)Oh yes, I think that is a good comparison. And in the case of Kittelsen all his other work is mostly forgotten (he also did quite a few caricatures and landscapes) while the fairytale illustrations are known to almost "all".
But the slightly ironic thing is that he is sadly unrepresented in I would say all of the large art museums in Norway. Very few know his pictures from seeing them live, while almost everyone knows them from book illustrations and postcards and such. (I think its safe to say that all touristshops in Norway sell Kittelsen cards). But really - what does that do to an image - to only have a "life" via reprint and as illustration?
The reception of certain artists is sometimes nearly as thrilling as art itself: tells a lot about the wishes and ideas of the reviewing society/culture.
Oh absolutely! I sometimes find the intertextuality (for lack of a better word) of an image to be just as interesting as the image itself.
I think a very good example in this case is the Mona Lisa. When looking at that painting a viewer will not see "just" the painting, or even "just a Leonardo Da Vinci" painting" - but also one of the key images in works like the Da Vinci code and even surrealist works of art like Mona Lisa with a moustache. The basics being that an image is always more than just the image, and these added layers affect the way we read the painting.
How did you come to be so interested in the German Wilhelmine epoch or in German art in general???
Slightly by coincidence really. In the case of Goslar Kaiserpfalz it was staying a day in Goslar on my way to North Italy. We chose a hotel right by the palace, and naturally I had to take a look (I've always loved castles. ;) ), and the pictures captivated me. Not because they were necessarily so good (though I think a few of them are actually quite good), but because of the story. I was especially fascinated by the Barbarossa imagery and started talking with the guide there. She told me about Kyffhäuser and so the ball started rolling. The more I read the more I found Wilhelmine Germany to be truly fascinating.
I've always been fond of Romanticism and artists like Friedrich though, and I LOVE medieval legends and history so I guess the foundation for the fascination was already there.
In the "realistic" political paintings the "Inszenierung" (I don't know the English term for this)is more subtle. I think in these cases the visual mechanics are better compared to the propaganda messages in modern war films. Do you know, what I mean?
I have no idea what the English word for that term is either, but it is so close to a Norwegian term that I get your point very well, and I agree. The comparison between Von Werner's visual mechanics with later, more filmatic mechanics is very interesting. I hadn't thought about it in those terms - but I find the comparison fascinating. Hmm...I must ponder some more on this. ;)
I haven't had time to read your post on war films.
If its any consolation not all the posts are about war-films, it just that I find war films to be fascinating (in a horrid way) for many of the reasons you state above - and from fascination I guess come curiosity closely followed by a research.
As for 300 that film really creeped me. Too many disturbing undercurrents - all wrapped up in a very pretty package. For I will admit that visually the film was stunning - which in many ways makes it even more scary.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-28 12:10 pm (UTC)Hee. Maybe the Italian Renaissance? That seemed to be the chosen field of most of my fellow students. I think at least three of them ended up doing a masters on Raphael. ;) But at any rate Italian Baroque is a definite classic.
But it is sad that the "classic" version of European Art History is so narrow. I visited Sweden this April, and was struck by how little I knew about Swedish art - even if it is a neighbouring country.
Thankfully I've also discovered some art through LJ.
reading the comic books of Prince Valiant and other related stuff etc.
yay! I loved Prince Valiant as a child too, and I still find Hal Fosters drawings to be very good. (though somewhat historically incorrect - but that is part of the fun I guess.)
So I took Great Britain instead and was rather happy about this, because so I could work on English art as well which I am still very interested in. Beardsley's drawings to Malory's Morte D'Arthur (that's the text source for Tristan in the UK) are simply fantastic...
Beardsley is wonderful, and I can see how this would be a fascinating subject. Speaking of the Arthur saga. A few years ago I was in Normandy and Bretagne and was surprised to find that the French had their own version of the Arthur myth with Merlin in Broceliande and so forth. Do you know if the French have a tradition for illustrating the Arthur myths as well?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-30 11:02 am (UTC)(URL: http://www.illusionsgallery.com/Tristan-Idolde-Delville.html).
I did not come across more French painters on Arthurian legends. I don't know if there are some works of Moreau on these legends, but I rather doubt it. And Joseph Bédiers books on Tristan ("Le roman de Tristan et Iseut" and "Le roman de Tristan par Thomas") were only published 1900/1902-05. So I really think the Arthurian legends were more a topic for British painters and Tristan more internationally after the success of Richard Wagner's opera... ;-)
Yes, the drawings of his successor were not nearly as good. And I once read an article on Prince Valiant's medievalism, and now I cannot remember clearly what it said. Have to dig it up again. Am getting old, it seems. Did you ever watch the two films they made of Prince Valiant? Awful crappy, painful to watch...
And thanks for the links to Alexandral's posts. I knew of the Hamershoi, but not of the Wrubel ones. They are stunning. I was captivated by him, when I saw him first in St. Petersburg.