The Plague

Arnold Böcklin was a Swiss Symbolist painter. His five versions of the Isle of the Dead inspired works by several late Romantic composers.

Plague is an 1898 painting in tempera by the Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin, held in the Kunstmuseum Basel. It exemplifies the artist's obsession with nightmares of war, pestilence and death. The painting shows Death riding on a bat-like winged creature who travels through a street in a medieval European town.