Patrick Pollefeys:
The St. Andre church [in Lavaudieu] is adorned with a painting entitled The Black Death, which dates back to 1355. In this fresco, quite unique in macabre art, the figure of Death - which stands for the black plague - is represented as a woman. Furthermore, she doesn't look like a putrefying corpse or a skeleton, as usual, but like a perfectly healthy human being. Both her hands hold arrows; and although she doesn't have a bow, many people lie at her feet, each one of them shot through. In Christian iconography, the bow often symbolizes the plague. Notice that the arrows have wounded the people at the exact places were the swellings caused by this terrible illness usually grow (neck, armpits, groin etc.) Saint Sebastian, who was thought to protect people against the plague in the Middle Ages, has been represented like this many times. It is difficult to identify precisely the figures taking part in this dance of death. Nevertheless, we can see there are different types of people: clergymen and laymen, rich and poor, men and women. The Lavaudieu fresco is unique in art history; but it is clearly related to other macabre genres, such as the dance of death and the triumph of death. These pictures, as well as The Black Death, show people from different social classes and convey the same lesson: death can take anybody away, whatever the social class he belongs to.