The Pestilence of 1656

This exceptionally grim portrayal of Naples’s devastating bout with the bubonic plague in 1656 is set outside the city walls in a metaphorical battlefield covered with bodies and devoid of any suggestion of divine intercession. The grotesque blisters and blackened limbs that were often manifestations of the plague presented challenges for contemporary artists, who were expected to show restraint and decorum in their works. Instead, Coppola depicted bloated bodies with varying colors to suggest different states of decomposition. In the foreground, an infant tries to nurse from his dead mother’s breast; nearby, a figure tending to the dead covers his face with a cloth, alluding both to the odor of the decaying bodies as well as to the fear of contracting the plague through putrid air, a false but widespread belief at the time.