The Descent into Limbo

Christian tradition held that after his death on the cross Christ went down to Limbo, the edge of the underworld, to free the righteous who had died before his coming. Here the underworld is a rocky mountain where demons torment the damned. Christ steps out of a double-arched opening in the rock, carrying the banner of the cross, and draws the patriarchs of the Old Testament out of the dark. The panel was once part of a single long altar board painted with seven scenes. In the story it came after the mourning over Christ's body, now in Florence, and before Pentecost, now in London. The others are in Munich, New York and Boston. Their owners do not agree on a date. Munich places the set before 1312 or 1313, the National Gallery in London at about 1310 to 1318, and other scholars put it in the 1320s.