A Sense of Time: Experiencing Plague and Quarantine in Early Modern Italy

Abstract

A RELIEF PANEL OF ST. SEBASTIAN , produced in early sixteenth-century Deruta, is well known among historians of material culture as the earliest known example of Italian lusterware. This claim is made possible by the unusually prominent date inscription on the lower section of the piece: July 14, 1501. The precision of the date on the panel is striking, given that premodern conceptions of time have often been characterized as organic and imprecise when compared with modern eras. The role played by St. Sebastian as one of the principal intercessors against the plague makes this object particularly intriguing. It is not known whether the inscription marked the end of an outbreak of plague, or perhaps a personal experience of healing in the course of an epidemic. Either way, the enduring nature of the saint’s role for intercession is intensified through reference to a specificmoment in time, shown here by a precise date rather than a visual representation of an event akin to those illustrated on votive panels. To look back on episodes of early modern Italian plague is to see how a