User:Johannes der Taucher/BoutsFalloftheDamned

The Fall of the Damned (Dutch: De Val van de verdoemden) is an oil on panel painting completed in 1470 by Dieric Bouts, produced as the right portion of a triptych of a Last Judgment scene commissioned for the town hall of Louvain, Belgium, in 1468. The central panel of the triptych is lost, but the left side panel (or shutter), the Ascension of the Elect, survives along with the Fall of the Damned. The set of images would have drawn narrative inspiration from Genesis 2:10, the Book of Revelation and from the Purgatory of St Patrick, a 14th-century Irish manuscript by Berol telling of Sir Owein's legendary trip to Purgatory. The Fall has been on permanent loan from the Louvre to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, where it has been reunited with the Ascension since 1957.

The triptych was commissioned for the town hall of Louvain in mid-1468, with a contract signed later that year. Records further show that it would have been completed in 1469 and installed in the town hall in 1470. "The appearance of the missing central panel is known from a crude copy in the Munich Alte Pinakothek."

Writers note how the outer paintings work as pendants, in their striking but harmonious pairing, from a green, moist earthly paradise to the "contrasting shapes, color, figures and their expressions of torment" in the right panel. There, Hilde Clase writes, "In a volcanic landscape, the damned are sinking into the hell from the weight of their sins" in "well-balanced composition."

Further evidence for the pairing of the two works is drawn from the alignment of carpentry and metalwork for hinges and a lock, since the outer panels would have served as shutters.

Max Friedländer assigned the panel as "belong to the master's mature works."

Art historians have found sources for Bouts in the work of Rogier van der Weyden and from pictorial tradition of illuminated manuscripts The composition and mood of Bouts' example were taken up by Hieronymus Bosch's 1490 Fall of the Damned into Hell and Simon Marmion's Visions of Tondal from 1475. Then painting received cleaning, repair, or conservation in 1543, 1628, 1904, 1941, 1951, 1971 and 1997.

HAS categories:    Paintings by Dieric Bouts. 1470s paintings. Paintings based on the Book of Revelation. Paintings in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille. The Last Judgement in art. 15th-century painting stubs

ADD categories: Panel painting, Paintings based on the Book of Revelation. Judgment in Christianity. The Last Judgement in art. Early Netherlandish paintings.