The Blue Astronomer I and II - The Plague Doctor

The Spanish artist Diego Velázquez lived through the Great Plague of Seville, 1646–1652, occurring only a few years before his completion of the painting Las Meninas. This particular strain is believed to have arrived by ship from Algeria. It was spread north by coastal shipping, and then moved inland, afflicting towns.

The character of  Dona Maria Augustina Sarmiento is one of the Meninas’s (maids) that give the painting Las Meninas  its title. In my re-telling she is transformed into a Plague doctor. On her arm, In place of the tray with the red bucaro is a sharp beaked vulture. She wears a White Spirit Maiden mask, over this mask is another,  that of a plague doctor. Medical instruments emerge from her headdress and hang from her waist.  The White Spirit Maiden mask is worn to guide people between this world and the spirit world, a task that lay too within the realm of the Plague doctor who was employed to write down the names of the dead.