Picture 2 / 4
Rogier van der Weyden, The Last Judgment (Beaune Altarpiece), c. 1445–50
Christ sits on a rainbow against a golden sky, a lily at one side of his head and a sword at the other. Beneath him the archangel Michael, all in white, weighs the souls. Small naked figures climb out of the earth and go to the left or to the right.
Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of the duke of Burgundy, founded a hospital for the poor in Beaune in 1443 and ordered this altarpiece for it. It stood at the end of the great ward, where the sick could see it from their beds. Rogier painted no devils: the damned stumble towards the pit by themselves.
Michael looks straight ahead and holds the scales. In one pan a soul kneels, in the other one cries out.
The damned tear at each other and at themselves on their way to the right.
