Le Jugement dernier (polyptyque de Beaune)

In 1443 Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, founded a hospital for the poor at Beaune and commissioned Rogier van der Weyden to paint an altarpiece for its ward. It was meant to be seen by the dying. Across nine panels the Last Judgment unfolds, Christ enthroned on a rainbow above, and below him the Archangel Michael holding a set of scales to weigh each risen soul. The lower panels run as one continuous strip of ground, with the gate of heaven at one end and the mouth of hell at the other, and the naked dead climbing out of the earth in between. A sick person lying in that ward would have looked up from bed at exactly this: the moment their own soul would be weighed. Almost nothing survives to tell us who made most such altarpieces. Here the patron, the painter, the date and the place are all on record.