The Plague by Arnold Bocklin, Vintage Symbolism

The Plague (1898) by Arnold Bocklin is a vintage Victorian Era Symbolism fine art mythology macabre painting that exemplifies the artist's obsession with nightmares of war, pestilence and death. This scene is from the black plague in which Death rides facing backwards on a winged, fish-tailed flying mythological creature, who travels at high speed through the street of a medieval town. Death holds a weapon, a scythe, which he uses to cut down all those who lay in his path. Foreboding clouds of dark smoke rising in the far background (the direction in which Death is headed), indicating that the scene is likely part of a greater apocalypse that has befallen mankind. About the artist: Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901) was a painter specializing in Symbolism and influenced by Romanticism overlapping with the Pre-Raphaelites. They often portray mythological, fantasy figures along classical architecture constructions (revealing often an obsession with death) and creating a strange, fantasy world.