The Last Judgement
Last Judgement restoration from Crucifixion and Last Judgement by Jan van Eyck. 1400s
Bringing one of our biggest framed pieces ever to the St. Louis show this weekend. What else you gonna do when a big beautiful old frame like this crosses your path?
Abbreviated Last Judgement restoration from Crucifixion and Last Judgement by Jan van Eyck.
In the 1420s and 1430s, when oil and panel painting were still in their infancy, vertical formats were often used for depictions of the Last Judgement, because the narrow framing particularly suited a hierarchical presentation of heaven, earth and hell. By contrast, depictions of the Crucifixion were usually presented in a horizontal format. To fit such expansive and highly detailed representations onto two equally small and narrow wings, van Eyck was forced to make a number of innovations, redesigning many elements of the Crucifixion panel to match the vertical and condensed presentation of the Judgement narrative.
The right-hand wing, as with the Crucifixion wing, is divided horizontally into three areas. Here they represent, from top to bottom heaven, earth and hell. While Heaven is not visible in this version, earth, in the mid-ground, is dominated by the figures of Archangel Michael and a personification of Death; while in the lower ground the damned fall into hell, where they are tortured and eaten by beasts. Describing the hell passage, art historian Bryson Burroughs writes that “the diabolical inventions of Bosch and Brueghel are children’s boggy lands compared to the horrors of the hell [van Eyck] has imagined”.
Original medium: Oil on canvas, transferred from wood. 1420–1440
