Abstract
In 1951, the American Millard Meiss (1904-75) published Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death, in which he proposed a "courageous" overall interpretation of painting, primarily religious, in Tuscan society throughout the second 14th century. It was Georges Didi-Huberman who, in 1994, described the Meissian undertaking as "discreetly courageous", but the book's reception was turbulent, and the voices on its subject particularly discordant. 70 years after its publication, La Peinture après la peste (Painting after the Plague ) remains fertile ground for reflection: starting with the relatively harsh reception it received from Italian critics (C. L. Ragghianti), and the failure of an initial project to translate it into Italian, we come to the turn of the 1970s-80s, when, thanks to Enrico Castelnuovo's arrival at the Einaudi publishing house (Turin), Pittura dopo la morte nera (Painting after the Plague ) was given a new lease of life. The problematic knot (plague - representation - society) identified by Meiss continued to give rise to publications in the decades that followed (1990s, then 2000s and 2010s), and we'll start from the triad serving as the title of chapter 3, Guilt, Penance, and Religious Rapture, to propose an update, considering examples such as the images created by Spinello Aretino in particular.
