A Fable of Infection
A Fable of Infection

Summary/Abstract: Painting in the fifteenth century changed because the fragility of human life changed. Curiously, the bounty of Italian Renaissance painting was to flourish in the dark shadow of the plague. Art also infects: paintings contaminate, metaphorically, and perhaps even microbiologically. For, as has happened during our coronavirus closures, art galleries shut their doors. Viewing painting may also be a form of infection as the mind of the painter percolates, almost inexorably, into the mind of the viewer, as it seems to have done here, I hope, in my account of this work.

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