Last Judgement

Lucas van Leyden painted this monumental Last Judgment triptych around 1526–1527, his most ambitious surviving work depicting the divine separation of the blessed and damned at the end of time. The Last Judgment was among the most theologically significant subjects available to northern European painters, and Lucas's vast composition manages the cosmic scale of the event with remarkable compositional control. The central panel shows Christ enthroned in judgment, flanked by the Virgin and Baptist as intercessors, with the dead rising from their graves below. The wings show the ascending blessed and the descending damned with the narrative variety and physiognomic diversity that characterized Lucas's best narrative painting. The work is now in Leiden's Stedelijk Museum 'De Lakenhal'.

The triptych shows Lucas van Leyden's masterful handling of the complex multi-figure Last Judgement subject with the precise drawing, innovative spatial construction, and rich color that define his major paintings.