Since the dawn of civilisation in the cities of the Fertile Crescent in what’s now the Middle East, epidemics of infectious diseases have been a curse of those concentrations of people, as well as in armies. In classical times, both Athens and Rome were struck by epidemics of what’s likely to have been bubonic plague.

Michiel Sweerts’ painting of Plague in an Ancient City from about 1652-54 is believed to show Athens during one of these epidemics. The moribund and the dead litter the streets, and normal life has collapsed.

The pandemic known as the Black Death that started in about 1338 was different, though. Changing climate in the grasslands of Asia led to the movement of rodent populations into cities, and those rodents brought with them fleas carrying highly infectious diseases for humans, notably Yersinia pestis, the cause of bubonic plague.

Doubt has been cast that Boccaccio’s description of the Black Death in Florence was based on his personal experience, but few alive at the time could have escaped witnessing its deadly consequences. Much later, in the early nineteenth century, Luigi Sabatelli made this undated engraving to illustrate an edition of the Decameron, in The Plague of Florence in 1348.

Venice was particularly prone to outbreaks of plague, and developed procedures and establishments for coping with cases. In Tintoretto’s painting of Saint Roch Heals Plague Victims from 1559, those suffering from plague have been brought to this small chapel, where the saint is healing them. The dark room is already collecting a disarray of bodies, some seemingly close to death. Without the miraculous work of the saint, this would quickly have become the waiting room for hell. There were twenty-two outbreaks of plague recorded in Venice between 1361-1528, and a single epidemic in 1576-77 killed almost a third of its population.

Goya’s painting of a Plague Hospital from his disturbing series The Disasters of War (1808-10) shows management of an outbreak that occurred during the Peninsular War of 1808-14.

Arnold Böcklin reminds us that the spectre of death is never far away in The Plague, painted in 1898. This coincided with the late stage of a pandemic that had started in China in 1855, and in the last years of the century was circulating through different ports around the world, in Hong Kong in 1894, and Mumbai in 1896. That reached San Francisco in 1900-04.

As plague became less of a problem in the cities of Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, so other diseases took hold, including cholera, influenza and tuberculosis. Six pandemics of cholera swept cities across the world in the century from 1817. Spread largely in drinking water contaminated by human faeces, improvements in sanitation introduced by redevelopment of cities like London and Paris were decisive in bringing it under control.

Carlos Schwabe’s painting titled Crepuscule in the French original is more likely to refer to Dawn rather than dusk. This giant female figure of “dawn, shivering in her green and rose garment, was moving slowly along the deserted Seine”. This was an illustration for a 1900 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire.

Edvard Munch completed two versions of Hearse on the Potsdamer Platz in 1902. These depict a horse-drawn hearse in this famous square in the heart of Berlin. Amid its bright hues is the hearse, covered in a black pall, and drawn by a single black horse. Munch’s father was a doctor, and both his mother and older sister died of tuberculosis during the artist’s childhood in Oslo.

Finally, here’s a glimpse of one of the obsessions of the nineteenth century: the fear of being buried while still alive.

After his mother’s death, the eccentric artist Antoine Wiertz became increasingly obsessed with death. Premature Burial (1854) visits a not uncommon dread in the nineteenth century: that of being presumed dead, buried, then recovering to find yourself in a coffin.

This did happen, particularly during cholera epidemics, as indicated by the lettering on the opening coffin. The profound shock resulting from choleric dehydration could make the pulse and breathing so feeble as to escape detection; with hundreds or thousands of dead, many were dumped hurriedly into mass-produced coffins and so into mass graves. And a very few managed to survive.

Coffins were designed with bells which could be rung by a recovered person. Wiertz’s victim is left with the nightmare scenario of trying to make it back to the land of the living.

Few nineteenth century novels were featured in as many paintings and prints as Victor Hugo’s story of Quasimodo and Esmeralda, told in his Notre Dame de Paris, most popularly known as the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Hugo’s book has a curious origin. In the 1820s, the great cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, probably the city’s most visible and distinctive building, underwent restoration to repair the damage that had occurred during the Revolution. One of the foremen of the stonemasons working on the building was a ‘hunchback’ with a spinal deformity. Hugo became greatly interested in the cathedral’s Gothic architecture, and was keen to raise awareness of its importance and beauty. In 1829, he started work on this novel.

After an intense final few months of writing, Notre Dame de Paris was published in early 1831. It became enormously popular, and has been the basis for over a dozen movies since 1905, TV series, plays, operas and musicals, and ballets. As a result, its hunchback hero Quasimodo has developed a life of his own in modern legend.

Set in Paris in 1482, its central characters are Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of the cathedral who not only has a spinal deformity, but is nearly blind and largely inarticulate, and Esmeralda, a beautiful young dancer, thought (incorrectly, it turns out) to be a gypsy, who is the object of much male lust, and has a pet goat Djali who performs tricks.

Quasimodo’s guardian, the Archdeacon Frollo, lusts after Esmeralda and orders the bell-ringer to kidnap her for him. Quasimodo’s attempt fails, and the following day he is punished by a flogging and being put in the pillory. While there, he is badly dehydrated and calls for water, provided by Esmeralda. She’s later arrested and falsely charged of attempted murder, for which she is sentenced to death by hanging.

As Esmeralda is being led to the gallows, Quasimodo swings down on a bell-rope and carries her off to sanctuary inside the cathedral. However, the court of parliament then decides to remove her right of sanctuary, making her liable to arrest. Local gypsies rally to this, and charge the cathedral to rescue her.

When Quasimodo sees the gypsies, he assumes that they want to hurt Esmeralda, so drives them away; when the king’s men arrive, he misunderstands their purpose, and tries to help them. Esmeralda is then ‘rescued’ by the Archdeacon, who tries to seduce her, then to betray her when she rejects him.

Esmeralda is finally taken to the gallows, where the Archdeacon laughs as she is killed. Quasimodo gets his revenge by pushing the Archdeacon from the height of the cathedral, then goes to the cemetery where he dies of starvation while hugging Esmeralda’s corpse. Much later, they are discovered still in their embrace; when their bones are separated, Quasimodo’s turn to dust.

Probably one of the earliest paintings to show Victor Hugo’s story is this undated work by a Mademoiselle Henry who is claimed to have lived between 1790-1873. It shows Quasimodo Saving Esmeralda from the Hands of her Executioners: the bell-ringer has just swept the young woman from the gallows, and she has swooned away on his shoulder. He carries her in through the main entrance of the cathedral, to claim sanctuary for her. Her pet goat Djali is at the top of the steps. The rope running down the steps is the bell-rope on which Quasimodo swung down onto the gallows.

The strange Belgian narrative painter Antoine Wiertz painted a pair of portraits in 1839 showing the novel’s male and female leads. This is his Quasimodo, who resembles the figure in the painting above. Wiertz doesn’t appear to have been happy with this work, and labeled it a bad study.

For his portrait of Esmeralda, Wiertz used his favourite model, and an affectionate goat. The letters on her lap spell Phɶbus, the name of the captain of the King’s Archers, who she is convicted of attempting to murder.

Louis Boulanger painted this fascinating and painterly group of Six of Victor Hugo’s Characters in 1853, apparently for a friend. Clockwise from the top left they are Don Ruy Gomez, Don César de Bazan, Don Salluste, Hernani, Esméralda and De Saverny, but there’s no goat.

Jozef Van Lerius’ portrait of Esmeralda and Djali, which must have been completed before the artist contracted meningitis in 1875, is startlingly realist and gently erotic. Djali is shown with gold horns and hooves, and in front of the girl are, once again, the letters forming the name Phɶbus.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Little Esmeralda from 1874 conforms less to Hugo’s character. She is fair and would never be taken for a ‘gypsy’, and is seen carrying wild flowers out in the country, perhaps on the coast of Normandy. She does, though, have Djali as her companion.

There have been many illustrated editions of Notre Dame de Paris, in its original French, English and other translations. Among them is an edition published in 1889, with engravings based on a series of drawings made by the Naturalist Luc-Olivier Merson between 1881 and 1889, three of which I show here.

This shows Esmeralda taking pity on Quasimodo when he had been flogged and put in the pillory, by giving him a drink of water. Naturally she is accompanied by Djali.

Esmeralda and Djali are here seen with Phɶbus, I think.

This is Merson’s treatment of Quasimodo carrying the swooning Esmeralda from her first brief visit to the gallows up into the sanctuary of the cathedral.