Religious art has always represented the trials of life, with symbolism like memento mori (an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death) reminding believers that life and death are intertwined. Epidemics have over history inspired artists to create works with religious themes. In Lombardy, the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, the Triumph of Death fresco at the Oratorio dei Disciplini in Cluson represents just some of the plague art of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that followed the Black Death. The Psalter of Bonne de Luxembourg, who died of the plague in 1349, holds a chilling memento mori of the Three Living and the Three Dead. 

During the COVID-19 crisis, the trend continues in both expected and unexpected ways. In India, folk artists have depicted gods in face masks dancing near bottles of hand soap. In Romania, an artist has teamed up with a marketing firm in a campaign to express thanks to frontline health care workers with a series of posters placed around Bucharest. The posters show healthcare workers depicted as saints, following the styles of religious iconography. The posters have caused some consternation, with the Romanian Orthodox Church calling them blasphemous but people from other denominations expressing their admiration.

(Based on: May 2, 2020, BBC article and May 15, 2020, EuroNews article)