Memory and the Representation of Public Health Crises: Remembering the Plague of Provence in the Tricentennial

Abstract

From May 1720 through the summer of 1722, the French region of Provence and surrounding areas experienced one of the last major epidemics of plague to strike Western Europe. The Plague of Provence (or “Great Plague of Marseille”) represents a major eighteenth-century disaster that left in its wake as many as 126,000 deaths. Over the last three hundred years, commemorative artworks have memorialized the disaster and helped define how it is remembered. To help mark the tricentennial, this essay will examine a series of images portraying different aspects of the Plague of Provence. In particular, it will analyze how these images depict what I argue are two central themes in the art of the Plague of Provence: Marseillais civic virtue and the medical profession. Doing so reveals how these subjects were valued or perceived in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and why this matters today as we confront new contagious diseases including COVID-19.