Documents do not clearly indicate when Böcklin started work on this painting. According to Heinrich Alfred Schmid, however, the artist was inspired by the news about the occurrence of the plague in Bombay in 1898 (Schmid archive, Kunstmuseum Basel; Carl Brun also reports on Böcklin's interest in the plague in India, Brun 1902, p. 19).

Böcklin had already developed the idea of the composition in 1876 in drafts for the planned painting “The Cholera”, which, however, was not executed. The designs, which show great similarities in the figure of Death riding the dragon, are in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt (Holenweg/Zelger 1998, nos. 392–396).

Later drafts for the Basel painting are kept in the print room of the Kunstmuseum Basel (inv. 1923.35 and 1902.63; Holenweg/Zelger 1998, nos. 506 and 507).

(Text: Kunstmuseum Basel)