Shop art print and framed art La chute des damnés by Dirk Bouts

The Fall of the Damned was painted by Dirk Bouts around 1470 and is now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. The painting comes from a Last Judgement triptych commissioned from Dirk Bouts by the city of Leuven in 1468. Only the two side panels have survived: on the left, The Ascension of the Elect, depicting paradise, and on the right, The Fall of the Damned, depicting hell. The subjects of heaven and hell are taken from the Bible, in the chapters relating Genesis (2, 10) and the Apocalypse, and from a 14th-century Irish manuscript, Saint Patrick's Purgatory, written by Bérol, which recounts the legendary journey of the knight Owein to the afterlife. At the top of the painting, the bodies of the damned are thrown by devilish bats. They fall onto sharp rocks with sharp lines, in a chiaroscuro that contrasts with the world painted on the panel of Paradise. Beside them, flying turtles fall from the sky into the frozen lake, where other monsters await them. At the far left, one of the torments described by Owein is depicted in the form of a wheel bristling with fiery hooks from which hang bodies crushed by its weight. Just below left, in a cave, the damned burn in the flames of Hell. They are thrown in by bright-eyed demons with horns, claws and sharp teeth, who seem to be enjoying themselves in the chaos. It reaches its climax in the foreground, where the naked bodies of the damned express the full horror of their condition and the abuse they are suffering. The women scream [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the renaissance period. It belongs to the flemish & northern renaissance style.

 

« La chute des damnés » is kept at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France.

 

Find the full description of La chute des damnés by Dirk Bouts on Wikipedia.