PLAGUE BANNER. CHRIST AND SAINTS. BY BONFIGLI
One more Madonna banner calls for passing notice—that of Bonfigli at Corciano near Perugia, dated 1472. It has the same general character as his ‘Madonna della Misericordia’. The quaint head-gear of the angels supporting her robe is the rose-wreath, symbolic of the Madonna, which appears, in one form or another, in so many of her pictures.
In nearly all these banners, as in other archaic works, the dwindling size of individual figures indicates the lesser parts they have to play. In many the Madonna fills almost all the banner’s surface.
In another of Bonfigli’s banners in the church of S. Maria Nuova at Perugia the figure of Christ, wearing a cruciferous nimbus, dominates the picture. He holds the arrows of pestilence ready to be launched among the people. His face is sad and regretful, as He executes faithfully the behests of His Father. On either side of Him saints bear the emblems of the Passion, and to the right and left are the darkened sun and moon. Beside Him kneel the Madonna and the Franciscan S. Paulinus. In the lowest part of the picture are the chimneys and towers of Perugia, with the pest-fiend, in the semblance of a huge bat, bearing a scythe, and the Angel of Deliverance smiting him with his lance. Below, shepherded by S. Benedict and S. Scholastica, the diminutive citizens kneel in prayer.
Yet another type of plague banner is that in which the figure of a saint plays the leading rôle. The saint is always Sebastian, only because in Umbria and Tuscany he was the chief accredited protector against pestilence. The finest example of this type is the S. Sebastian of Sodoma, described above (pp. 100-1).
Plague banners were not the exclusive product of Umbria. Two of the most famous, the S. Sebastian of Sodoma and the Sistine Madonna of Raphael, painted at Siena and Florence respectively, are products of the Tuscan school: but it is only in and around Perugia that they can be found and studied to advantage. The Sistine Madonna, in which the Madonna and Child are attended by S. Sixtus and S. Barbara, was painted during an epidemic of pestilence for the Black Brothers of S. Sisto at Piacenza. No record exists that it was ever actually used for the purpose for which it was painted. Bonfigli, in the spirit of Phidias, had painted ‘Mary the Queen of Heaven’: Raphael, in the spirit of Praxiteles, had painted ‘Mary the Mother of God’. The people wanted a queen and Raphael gave them a peasant woman. They could not see, as Raphael saw, in womanhood the embodiment of gentleness spiritualizing the brute in man. They could not see in motherhood the vision of willing suffering transfigured to joy. It was this reunion of Art with Nature, that dethroned the plague banner from the affections of the common people.