SUMMARY The Gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis is responsible for deadly plague, a
zoonotic disease established in stable foci in the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia. Its …

A vivid recreation of how the governors and governed of early seventeenth-century Florence
confronted, suffered, and survived a major epidemic of plague Plague remains the paradigm …

Employing a wide range of approaches from various disciplines, contributors to this volume
explore the diverse ways in which European art and cultural practice from the fourteenth …

Rethinking Art's Histories aims to open out art history from its most basic structures by
foregrounding work that challenges the conventional periodisation and geographical …

A social history of reception, this study focuses on sacred art and Catholicism in Rome
during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The five altarpieces examined here …

THE POPULARITY OF SEBASTIAN'S IMAGERY since the Middle Ages can be largely
attributed to the once widespread belief that he offered protection from epidemic diseases; …

Interrogating how medieval and early modern communities have acted as participants,
observers, and interpreters of events and how they ascribed meaning to them, the essays in …

Accounting for Affection examines the multifaceted nature of early modern motherhood by
focusing on the ideas and strategies of Roman aristocratic mothers during familial conflict …

Plague was one of the enduring facts of everyday life on the European continent, from
earliest antiquity through the first decades of the eighteenth century. It represents one of the …

This chapter focuses on Guercino's 1619 painting Saint Sebastian Succored, which includes
the unusual detail of a surgeon caring for Sebastian's wounds. The chapter first examines …