The earliest medical images of the plague: manuscripts of Aldobrandino of Siena’s Régime du corps , pestilence, and the Black Death

Abstract Despite the growing number of studies on images of the plague, illuminated manuscripts of Aldobrandino of Siena’s regimen of health, the Régime du corps (1256), have not yet received the attention they deserve. Created over a period of more than two hundred years—from before the onset of the Second Plague Pandemic, through the years of the Black Death, and into a period of recurring epidemics, these manuscripts allow us to examine whether, how, and when medieval illuminators adapted visual traditions to new conceptions and realities of disease. The images illustrate the chapters on the ambient air, on pestilence—a concept predating the Black Death that referred to epidemic diseases in general—and on healthy and unhealthy cities. The corpus features unique visualizations of the medical concept of miasma and images of sick people in urban settings. It also includes a striking depiction of a distressed patient pointing to his armpit. While drawing on established visual strategies, this image clearly reflects the illuminator’s direct experience of bubonic plague. Dating from the time of the Black Death, it is the oldest known clinical visualization of a plague victim.