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| Dieric Bouts Ascent of the Elect ca. 1470 oil on panel Palais del Beaux-Arts de Lille |
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| Dieric Bouts Fall of the Damned ca. 1470 oil on panel Palais del Beaux-Arts de Lille |
Diptych
Two panels – one paradisal, of the sort usually positioned to the left – the other infernal, which would typically be seen on the right. Between the two we would expect to have – as in the majority of Flemish altarpieces at this period – a third panel representing the Last Judgment. But no trace of one has ever been found.
In fact, the left-hand panel does not exactly represent Paradise, but the view toward Paradise. In a garden comparable to the lost Eden, happy souls are guided by angels toward a sort of trampoline where they will be vaulted up to Paradise proper.
The Path of the Elect
In this semi-divine garden, vestibule to the definitive garden – which is no doubt beyond any possibility of representation in its mystical splendor – clear water flows between banks littered with precious stones, among which grow plants sufficiently detailed that we can identify them.
In the middle-ground stands a fountain from which issue the four rivers one regularly encounters in depictions of the terrestrial paradise. Here is the description in Genesis: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon, the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel, that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
In the foreground we see a group of souls, nearly nude, conducted by an angel viewed from the back, wearing a splendid chasuble. In the distance, other angels lead other groups toward the celestial embarkation. The horizon is very beautiful, already having reached the level of Claude Lorrain in the way the trees are handled. Clouds form a sort of tunnel, within which tiny soul-specks are wafted toward Heaven.
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| Dieric Bouts Fall of the Damned (detail) ca. 1470 oil on panel Palais del Beaux-Arts de Lille |
Hell without an Exit
No way to leave Hell, it appears. In the same way the good are wafted into the sky, the evil sink endlessly into the pit, mistreated by demons shown in the guise of a rich variety of nasty animals. The damned are completely nude, but not immodest – their anatomy is admirably austere. The crepuscular horizon outlines rocky crags with flames shooting in every direction, and the infernal sky is filled with fearsome creatures. A demon with bat wings prepares to drop one of the damned into the pit, another seizes one as he plunges.
Double Distance
Distance plays an important role among all the Flemish primitives. It represents the yearning for an elsewhere. The vestibule-garden already constitutes a distance from the quotidian earth. Within that distance the trampoline-hill is yet more distant, and furnishes access to the ultimate distance of Heaven.
In Hell, distance actually occupies the foreground – in the imaginations of the tortured. The upper register – that crepuscular anti-sky from which the damned are falling – is in fact our own world.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)