The epidemic that raged in Venice in a graphic novel

I discovered a small but precious Sardinian publishing house, Camena, which pays homage to the primordial Latin muse with its name. This is a new reality connected with the Accademia del Fumetto of Cagliari, which has already published high quality works or prestigious names such as that of Romano De Marco, one of our most significant Italian thriller writers.

Today, however, I’m talking to you about a graphic novel created – both in texts, drawings and colors – by the talented cartoonist born in Oristano Stefano Obino: “Bartolomeo Salazar. The silence of the plague”, second episode dedicated to the doctor who lived in the nineteenth century, at the time when Cagliari was devastated by a cholera epidemic, a story presented in “Bartolomeo Salazar. The Last Plague Doctor” (2022).

This time, however, in “The Silence of the Plague”, Bartolomeo becomes the narrator and tells his exuberant granddaughter Camilla about his ancestor. Thus we discover the story of Joaquin Salazar, a doctor who worked in Venice at the time of the plague that raged in the sixteenth century, in a period in which the Serenissima was gloomy not only by the problem of contagion, but also by the harsh defeat of Lepanto and the Ottoman bogeyman was becoming more and more threatening. This tension pours into the atmospheres and colours, since in some pages shadows and darks prevail, even if the artist always manages to highlight the Beauty and it doesn’t matter whether this is in a glimmer of light or in a cloud that it is breaking down to rejoin the others either in the flight of the seagulls or in a spectacular panorama of the sea or in the evocative monuments that overlook the Lagoon. Made with a watercolor coloring technique, the plates flow like a marvel, also because the drawings master the spaces, movements and perspectives. The reader notices and can appreciate the study behind each drawing. The urban views are perfectly delineated, there is great precision in reporting the shapes of ancient sailing ships, the vagaries of the weather and the customs are no exception.

The mask with a beak, used by operators to avoid being infected, is a bit reminiscent of our masks (and here comes the connection with current events and the pandemic we have had to face), becoming a symbol of attempts to defend humanity , clinging to a survival instinct that not even the massacres have ever managed to eradicate. And in all this what remains of our humanity? Joaquin explains it to us, when he will have to make a watershed choice, one of those choices that splits you in two, from which you don’t emerge unscathed. He will prevail, something that cannot be taken for granted in this subverted world. Bartolomeo himself reminds his granddaughter: “You know, Camilla, when confusion reigns all around us, men lose hope and love for others.”

And so light also triumphs in these paintings, accompanied by the vivid red of a sunset or a dress, or in everyday scenes such as that of a mother chasing her little girl, reminding us that hope must never be extinguished.