Jules-Elie Delaunay. The Plague in Rome. 1869. Oil on wood.

Inspired by a tale from Jacobus De Voragine’s Golden Legend, Delaunay’s painting is an imaginative depiction of a disease that only a few centuries before his time, had irreparably ravaged Europe. The subject is a 7th-century
bubonic plague in Rome, whose historical cause was believed to be the murder of Saint Sebastian. Divine vengeance appears in the form of the good angel directing the bad angel towards a door. While a fantastical portrayal,
Delaunay’s painting captures the religious fears that often accompany the frenzied reaction to epidemics by showing that even the pinnacle of ancient civilisations was once affected by a pestilence borne of displeasing the Divine.

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka. Tametomo’s Ferocity Drives Away the Smallpox Demons. 1890. Woodblock print.

A fierce warrior, known for his formidable archery skills, Minamoto no Tametomo was a 12th-century samurai who had attained the status of a demigod amongst his subjects. In this iconic ukiyo-e work by Yoshitoshi, Tametomo stands tall, proud and ready to attack two demons, supposed to be variola minor and variola major — the two virus strains that cause smallpox — who are petrified and are fleeing at his sight. In showing a powerful ruler literally standing up to a disease, the print encapsulates this idea that the immunity of political power goes beyond that sphere — one that
has been used to fuel plenty of strongman narratives during times of crises, much to the detriment of entire populations.

Unknown artist. Jacopo Oddi’s La Franceschina. c. 1474.

Often mistaken as an illustration of patients of the bubonic plague, this illustration from Jacopo Oddi’s 15th-century Franciscan chronicle, La Franceschina, actually depicts a group of leprosy patients. Franciscan monks provide succour to these victims suffering from what was an incurable condition at the time. As believers in the absolute poverty of Christ, Franciscans renounced private property and lived a life of mendicancy, in service of those in need. This portrayal provides a clear picture of a time in European history when religious figures were at the forefront of healthcare
since doctors were few in number and mostly served the upper classes. On the other hand, monks were often well-trained in medical knowledge, alongside other scientific disciplines as monastery libraries were a storehouse of ancient and contemporary texts, which allowed them to act as doctors for those in need yet without the necessary wherewithal.

Robert Cruikshank. Robert Cruikshank’s Random Shots (No 1) A Cholera Doctor. 1832. Coloured etching.

In the first of Robert Cruikshank’s two cartoons depicting the cholera epidemic in England that began in 1832, we see a caricature of a greedy doctor. Pot-bellied, crooked-nosed and with diabolical eyes, the doctor is far removed from the image of a saviour; instead drawn using the idiom reserved for greedy businessmen. The image portrays the financial interest of the medical profession to prolong an epidemic and the public’s vulnerability to it by exploiting the fears surrounding the disease instead of researching for a solution. Scattered across the image are a number of references to contemporary affairs. One example is that the knife being used by the doctor is really a sword. The words on it, ‘The Lancet’, refer to a newspaper that openly criticised another newspaper, The Times, for its attacks on the Board of Health’s negligence.

Robert Cruikshank. Robert Cruikshank’s Random Shots (No 2) A Cholera Patient. 1832. Coloured etching.

In this second cartoon, Cruikshank turns his gaze towards the troubled public. The Board of Health’s complicity in cholera ravaging the country is signified by their name being etched on a tabletop that is supported by apparently a vulture’s skeleton. The dismayed patient — skeletal and blue — is stuck between two disturbing remedies — blue pills, a kind of laxative, and a towering bottle of emetic. On the body of the skeleton are the words ‘Fee Fo Fum’, the first line of an old English rhyme which is followed by ‘I smell the
blood of an Englishman’, signalling the alarming mortality rate during the epidemic.

Antoine-Joseph Wiertz. L’Inhumation Precipitée (The Premature Burial). Oil on canvas.

In 1837, when Wiertz visited Naples, the cholera epidemic was raging; having affected thousands of people and with a severe mortality rate. Since at the time, there was no conclusive method to determine whether a person was actually dead, untimely burials were a common occurrence. In this painting, supposedly inspired by Poe’s The Premature Burial, a horrified figure struggles to escape a coffin in a crypt. The ambiguity of his predicament makes the presence of bones and other coffins extremely suspect. What if
there’s someone else in another coffin who is also alive? What if the skulls and bones belong to someone who died from having been buried alive? Wiertz’s painting, beyond a horrifying scenario, depicts the fallibility of medical science and the dangers of hasty action during times of crisis.

Edvard Munch. Spring. 1889. Oil on canvas.

Having lost his mother and his sister to tuberculosis in his childhood, the disease remained a preoccupation of Munch’s work throughout his life. In this poignant proto-Expressionist painting, the warm, golden sunlight and a gentle breeze through the window herald the arrival of spring. Yet the subject, a pallid young woman, has her face turned away from this universal symbol of rejuvenation. Next to her caregiver and with her head against a pillow, her ailment has already detached her soul from the world of the living. Munch’s work encapsulates the sense of dejection that accompanied tuberculosis in
the nineteenth century.

Egon Schiele. Edith Schiele on Her Deathbed. 1918. Chalk on paper.

The prolific and controversial Egon Schiele attracted a great deal of controversy during his short-lived career owing to his explicit, often sensuous, depictions of human figures. Yet here, in the last sketch he made of his wife, Edith Schiele on the day she passed away from influenza during 1918–20’s flu pandemic, all we see is an exhausted young face. Her eyes barely seem to stay open as life is slowly draining away yet her hand betrays a desire to let Egon capture her essence one final time. While her pain is evident, there is also a stark radiance in this depiction. Edith was six-months pregnant when she died on the 28th of October, 1918, just three days in change before Egon died from the same disease.

Andrew Wyeth. Christina’s World. 1948. Tempera on panel.

One of the twentieth century’s most iconic paintings, Christina’s World is, as the Museum of Modern Art puts it, ‘a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a place’. The subject, Anna Christina Olson, was a close friend of Wyeth’s who was suffering from a degenerative muscular disease that has been variously speculated as polio or Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Despite her condition, Christina chose not to rely on a wheelchair, instead preferring to crawl. Against a desolate, despairing landscape, Christina’s determination to make her way across back to her farmhouse is a picture of resilience and defiance personified — in a bright pink dress that reminds us of life, slowly but assuredly surviving, amidst the tyranny of greys and browns.

Bettman. Politically Motivated Sign. 1968. Photograph.

The third influenza pandemic of the twentieth century, caused by the derogatorily titled ‘Hong Kong Flu’, began in 1968. Here, a billboard advertisement from Des Moines, Iowa, provides an example of American
politics’ blatant xenophobia wherein a disease is treated like an unwanted immigrant. Contagions have historically had the reputation of always being ‘foreign’, as a means of diverting attention from the breakdown of public health order and stigmatising entire countries, races and communities. By the
time the pandemic came to an end in 1970, over a million people had died from it worldwide, with around 100,000 deaths in the US alone.

W. Eugene Smith. Tomoko Uemura in her Bath. 1972. Silver gelatin print.

Starting from 1971, American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith and his wife, Aileen Mioko Smith, spent three years in the Japanese city of Minamata documenting the plight of the victims of Minamata disease. Tomoko Uemura, like a great many children in Minamata, was congenitally affected by mercury poisoning owing to her mother’s unwitting consumption of fish contaminated by industrial waste released in the Minamata Bay by the Chisso Corporation. The photograph is composed deliberately like Michelangelo’s La Pieta — a preeminent symbol of motherly lamentation in Western art history — with Tomoko and her mother replacing the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Smith’s extensive documentation of Minamata victims, court proceedings and civilian protests exposed to the world the menace of this epidemic that had been brought about entirely by corporate recklessness and bureaucratic negligence.

Keith Haring. Ignorance = Fear. 1989. Poster.

Haring used his iconic graffiti style for this seminal poster about the AIDS Crisis. Three figures suffering from AIDS, marked by crosses on their body, have shut themselves from any kind of communication with the world. In this empathetic work of art, Haring shows how the stigma associated with the disease stopped the afflicted from interacting with the world which had inhumanly ostracised them. The simple message here is that our vulnerability to any affliction is exponentially heightened by our ignorance of it, while our compassion for the sufferers is inversely affected in such cases.

David Wojnarowicz. Untitled (Face in Dirt). 1991. Silver gelatin print.

David Wojnarowicz died from AIDS at the age of 37, little over a year after he took this photograph of himself in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. Speaking of his condition, Wojnarowicz wrote. ‘The first minute after being diagnosed you are forever separated from what you had come to view as your life or living…’
This photograph embodies exactly that statement. Like a photograph from an archaeological expedition, his face appears to be like that of a mummified corpse which has just been discovered. Denouncing the stigma that medically and socially distanced AIDS victims following the disease’s outbreak, the photograph is a haunting depiction of a man anticipating his own death in a world that seemed to have abandoned people like him.

William Utermohlen. Blue Skies. 1995. Oil on canvas.

In 1995, American artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. In this painting from the same year, he conveys his reaction to such a devastating piece of news. The abstract quality of the painting shows the onset of a condition that will alter his very perception of reality with time. The blue void beyond the studio skylight, similar to the colour of the floor, depicts earth and sky as no longer distinct for him — his blue sweater further conveying his own spatial confusion. His left hand tightly grasps the table, desperately holding on to the moment so he can put it on a canvas. That there is no one else in the room portrays the loneliness that will characterise this disease from thereon. Utermohlen’s self-portraits in the wake of his diagnosis are crucial documents of this nebulous disease — for the medical and the art community. He passed away in 2007.

John Moore. Omu Fahnbulleh stands over her husband Ibrahim after he staggered and fell, knocking him unconscious in an Ebola ward on August 15, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. 2014. Digital photograph.

In 2014, in the midst of the West African ebola epidemic, John Moore became one of the first photographers to arrive in the region to photograph the conditions. This photograph, taken in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, has a grim backstory to it. Ibrahim Fahnbulleh was a patient who had been moved into this blue room in a former USAID-funded school that had been turned into an ebola ward. The other patients in the room had already died and were decaying right next to him when healthcare workers insisted that he move to another room. A struggling Ibrahim almost made it out of the morbid place before he crashed and fell on the floor. His wife, Omu’s despair is captured in this photograph where they are engulfed by the room’s bright blue walls, as if trapped in an ocean of uncertainty following Ibrahim’s fall.
Moore’s brave efforts inspired the photojournalist community to step forward to record the crisis on the ground and not from afar.

Duyi Han. The Saints Wear White. 2020. Digital concept render.

Duyi Han’s concept of a church in the Hubei province of China, being covered with murals of doctors and medical workers in place of saints and divine figures, is a prophetic work of art. Made in the early days of COVID-19, before the disease had become a global stop sign, the work showed the central significance that the medical community would assume amidst a destructive plague whose ravages we are still recovering from. Masks and PPE kits unite these figures as instantly recognisable frontline workers. In positioning the ordinary within the realm of the holy, Han shows how science has taken over the remedial position of religion in the modern day.

Philip Cheun. Los Angeles. 2020. Digital photograph.

Stasis; wide expanses of empty urban landscapes; a smattering of people, dwarfed by the world around them — the visual idiom of COVID-19 is one of civilization in suspension. In this photograph from Michael Kimmelman’s The Great Empty, the iconic Santa Monica beach in Los Angeles, a symbol of the vibrant booming Californian coastal life, appears to be a post-apocalyptic vista. Lockdown rules that restricted access to public spaces as a means of controlling the virus provided us with a plethora of similar images where familiar landscapes had suddenly turned alien, simply owing to the subtraction of people. With over 7 million deaths worldwide, COVID-19 remains the single most devastating event of the 21st century… yet.