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Primary sourcePainting14th century

Fresco of Plague Personified, Lavaudieu Abbey

Unknown author · 14th century

A 14th-century mural imagining the plague as a woman shooting arrows into victims, showing how people pictured the pestilence.

A contemporary visual depiction of how people imagined and personified the Black Death.

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Faded fresco on a red background. A central woman in a long red robe and dark veil holds bundles of arrows in both hands. Figures on the left and right, some kneeling or seated, are being struck by arrows. Letters are painted at the top.
Unknown author, fresco personifying plague, 14th century. Former Abbey of Saint-André-de-Lavaudieu, France.

About this source

What it is

This fresco, by an unknown artist, is located in the former Abbey of Saint-André-de-Lavaudieu in France and dates from the 14th century. It depicts the plague personified as a blindfolded woman who shoots arrows into the people around her.

Why it matters

The arrows strike figures in places such as the neck and armpits, where the swellings, or buboes, of the plague commonly appeared. This image reveals how medieval people, lacking modern medical knowledge, understood and visualized the disease as a supernatural force or punishment striking down the living.

Look closer

  • Why do you think the artist chose to show the plague as a person with arrows rather than realistically?
  • What does the placement of the arrows suggest about medieval observations of the disease's symptoms?
  • What might this image tell us about how communities coped with fear and uncertainty during the pandemic?

This painting is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of The Black Death on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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