Bay 4 - The Last Judgement

Panel 03 - The sinner punished in hell

Description:
The unrepentant sinner seen being cast out of the church in the adjoining panel receives his due punishment in the fires of hell. He is shown naked but with his money bag still around his neck, being boiled in a cauldron over a fire tended by the devil on the right. Above him a grinning devil, covered with hair, craps a silver coin into the man's mouth - a visual topos which occurs frequently in medieval art throughout northern Europe and Italy and was equally applicable for misers, usurers or simonists. This combination of the scatological and the eschatological seems to have appealed strongly to contemporary tastes.

Note: The vestigial wings growing from the buttocks of the fire-tending devil (which also appear in ??) are an ironic comment on the 'corruption' of the rebel angels after their fall.

Tituli: None

Restoration notes: Generally good condition and original, though some of the red-glass border pieces appear to be replacements. Restorer's label "G39" painted in top-left.

Details:

1) The miser receives his due

2) The grinning devil;