The Triumph of Death and Divine Judgment. Thoughts on epidemic causalities and sensory boundaries of the Gothic

This article proposes a specific link between the scenarios of the Triumph of Death, defined as a theme with its own aureole, and the contentious spaces of the Divine Judgment, understood above all the Final Judgment. Both are described as two alternative and undivided thematic structures, with meaning for themselves that, however, once deployed with all their unique force in the labyrinth of the visible, reveal very strong continuities that are not only justified according to shared thematic aspects. This involves reflecting on the borders of the vision, on the values that conjure up their sensory boundaries and exert pressure on the forms of capture of the narrated discourse. We have access to exclusive frameworks that, designed within the Gothic period in Italy, are useful for to separate without disunifying specific topics, which are founded on comparable or linked bases.

The weight of pandemics, internalized in the creation exercise contemporaneous or subsequent to these critical processes for the population, also anchored as an essential problem in medieval times, is another great argument to research. We are interested in the face and cross of both suppositions and do not prejudice certain behaviours built or created on subjective anticipations or foreshadowing that can take us to put the cart before the horse. The complexity of the dialectic between art and weight is unquestionable and the objective will be evidenced by a selection of works that, rather than being the examples that illuminate the defended theories, are the origin of the problem and the theses that are proposed and intended to be discussed.