The Ascension of the Elect or Paradise

Dieric Bouts's Ascension of the Elect (Paradise), painted around 1450 and now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, is the companion piece to his Fall of the Damned. The contrast between the two paintings reveals Bouts's vision of salvation and damnation with equal methodical precision. The blessed souls rise through a verdant garden landscape toward celestial light, with Bouts's characteristic quiet figures ascending in calm, orderly procession.

Bouts renders paradise with the same precise, methodical technique he applies to hell, using a luminous green landscape and carefully graduated light effects to create a vision of heavenly peace through characteristic restraint.