The skinny damned by Dieric Bouts

Before 1500, obesity was rare in Europe. People ate bread, vegetables and sometimes some chicken. Sugar was scarce and sweets basically didn’t exist. That is why paintings from the Middle Ages often resemble Suske and Wiske. They resemble us in everything, from the top of their heads to the hairs on their legs, but they are as delicate as almost anyone is today.

I was thinking about that when I was approached by a Japanese lady in a museum last summer. Could I tell her what I was looking at?

The question embarrassed me.

Like a heartless deity

What I was staring at, musing on thin and fat, was a representation of the damned on their way to the gates of hell. The artist had used his full skill to portray the despair and agony of the unfortunate. All the more unmoved sits Christ the Supreme Judge ruling over all this. Their gestures are refined, just like those of the angel Michael who weighs souls on his scales. He too is unmoved. And so I too, like a heartless deity, looked at those people in agony. Musing about the medieval menu.

The final judgment by Rogier van der Weyden is the most beautiful of its kind. A miracle work, intended for the Hospital in Beaune, where you can still see it. It was The enormous polyptych was placed in such a way that the dying could take a good look at it from their beds. So that, as we know from the client’s determination, ‘their last thoughts were led to the divine’.

Torturing devils as inspiration

There is also one at Dieric Bouts’ exhibition in M ​​Leuven (until January 14). Fall of the Damned to see, part of a triptych with it Last judgement that Bouts painted for the Leuven town hall. Bouts is known as the most introverted master of the old Flemish people, but in this painting he let loose. With him you look at a vertical accumulation of naked people, men and women, who are tortured in all conceivable and unthinkable ways by reptilian devils with claws like pincers. Bouts made his Hell on behalf of the Leuven town hall: it was His painting was intended to inspire the magistrates during their judicial process.

Welcome to Western medieval art.

The woman looked at me expectantly. How do you explain something like that to someone from a completely different culture? I muttered something about the Bible, heaven and hell, the weighing of souls. The woman nodded politely and continued walking. And I was embarrassed. Not very much, but enough.

Fascination, not revulsion

Why is it that such a scene remains somewhat at a distance for us? There were many people around me looking at the work and, like myself, no one showed any real disgust. Fascination, yes. But not disgust, as you experience with news photos where similar images fall straight to your heart. Of course, such a painting is not only old but also fiction. But at the time this art was indeed intended as a mirror. I think people in 1470, when sugar was still scarce, were terrified, looking at those fallen.

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