Milan, Lombardy's major commercial center, is devastated…
1624 CE to 1635 CE
Milan, Lombardy's major commercial center, is devastated by the plague introduced by the armies in the winter of 1629-30, an event that will be vividly described in Alessandro Manzoni's 1840 novel The Betrothed (Italian: I promessi sposi).
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View of Piazza San Babila, Milan during the plague of 1630. The Porta Orientale is in the background. In the centre of the piazza stand the column of S. Mona (1585) and the column of the lion (1628); at the foot of the former a priest celebrates mass. Eight plague carts laden with corpses head towards the Porta Orientale – presumably to the cemetery of S. Gregorio which stood by the lazaretto beyond the city gate. Another corpse lies on the ground by the church of S. Babila. This is from a series of fourteen etchings which were accompanied by a dedication to an un-named prince-cardinal, probably Teodoro Trivulzio. They are in the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo di Brescia. Source: G. Nicodemi, ‘Un curioso documento iconografico della peste del 1630 a Milano’, Archivio storico lombardo, 5th series 9 (1922), 361–63 (p. 362). Author: Melchiorre Gherardini
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