The Black Death

Though I think it's a little messed up to put the Black Death in terms of European art in the Mongol section instead of a European section of that time period, I digress. I will assume that the author doesn't mean to totally blame everything on the Mongols but just doesn't have enough information on them and needs to fill out the document quota. Or perhaps Strayer really wants to talk about the Black Death.

I had a wonderful art history class at CSM my first semester of college on the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Like all things in history, before discussing an event, the causes of that event must be discussed. So our first teachings were about the Proto-Renaissance, the Renaissance before the Renaissance, and of course, the Bubonic Plague.

I find Strayer's choice of paintings a tad lackluster. His "culture of death" is wrong. It's usually known as 'dance of death' throughout the languages of most European countries. There are many paintings of the living of all stations of life, not just the rich, but also the poor and the young (paintings like these have included infants) are literally dancing with skeletons. The point of all these paintings was how death was unavoidable at this time. Everyone was the same once they were infected with the plague. Death was an equal status.

The fact that these paintings were so widespread reflects how big of an impact the plague had on Europe at the time. Death was everywhere and that was elucidated in the writing and art of the time. The people of Europe were overwhelmed by it. They couldn't bury their growing number of dead, they couldn't do anything. Their loved ones were dropping like flies. This was an absolute catastrophe. But they bounced back in a big way. the Medieval Period was a minor Ice Age and following the Plague, it began warming. The smaller population was the beginning of the Renaissance and Europe landed on the global stage in a big way.

I can't ignore it. This section needs to be in Europe. It's just messed up to include with the Mongols because their trade routes spread it. The Age of Discovery needs to include an entire section of paintings about the destruction of Native Americans if this book is going to be considered fair. Beyond the disclaimer at the beginning that it isn't necessarily the Mongols fault, none of these have anything to do with them.