The Fall of the Rebel Angels

At the top of the panel God sits enthroned among red seraphim, and below him runs the heavenly choir, two long rows of stalls. On one side the seats are filled with angels. On the other they stand empty. Their former occupants are the figures tumbling through the gold below, pursued by the loyal angels, and as they fall they lose their colour and turn into black, clawed demons, piling up on a dark globe at the very bottom.

That is a great deal of drama for a picture 64 centimetres high, painted in Siena around 1340. About 70 years later the Limbourg brothers, illuminators working for the duke of Berry, painted the same subject for his book of hours, the Très Riches Heures, and French scholars see an echo of this panel in their page, where the angels' choir stalls also stand half empty.