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Secondary sourcePainting1498

Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken

Josse Lieferinxe · 1498

A painting showing Saint Sebastian pleading with God while gravediggers and townspeople are struck down by plague.

This altarpiece panel depicts a legendary plague and the saint invoked against it, showing how people responded to the Black Death's terror.

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Painting of a plague scene in a medieval town. Christ in red robes sits in clouds above, while a nude figure of St. Sebastian kneels in the sky with arrows in his body. Below, a red-capped man carries a body, and dead and dying people lie on a plaza before a church where clergy in white robes read and carry a censer.
Josse Lieferinxe, Saint Sebastian Interceding for the Plague Stricken, 1498. Walters Art Museum.

About this source

What it is

This painting was made in 1498 by Josse Lieferinxe and is now held by the Walters Art Museum. It shows Saint Sebastian kneeling in the sky pleading with Christ while, below, a plague scene unfolds in a town: a grave attendant collapses while carrying a body, and clergy process past the dying.

Why it matters

The scene is set during a legendary plague in seventh-century Pavia, but it was painted while the Black Death and its later outbreaks still devastated Europe. Sebastian was prayed to for protection against plague, so this altarpiece panel reveals how people turned to saints and religious imagery when they had no medical answers to mass death.

Look closer

  • Why is the gravedigger shown collapsing even as he buries another victim?
  • What might it mean that an angel and a demon are shown fighting in the sky above the scene?
  • Why might the artist, who never visited Italy, have based the town's appearance on a French city he knew?

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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