Last Judgement

The Master of Affligem painted this Last Judgement around 1501 for the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The subject of the Last Judgement was among the most important and complex in Christian art, typically reserved for large-scale commissions in churches and town halls where it served as both a devotional image and a moral warning. The oil medium allowed for rich tonal transitions and glazed layers of color that created luminous depth impossible with the older tempera technique. Such devotional panels served both liturgical contexts in churches and chapels and private devotional use in the homes of wealthy families who maintained personal altars and oratories.

The panel organizes the resurrection of the dead, Christ in judgment, and the separation of the blessed and damned within a multi-tiered cosmic composition, using the detailed narrative approach characteristic of Brussels workshop production.