c. 1470
Maître François French, active 1450-1499
France
In this powerful image, Christ elevates the chosen, assisted by angels, while demons drag the damned toward hell. Jean Chapuis's 14th-century poem The Seven Articles of Faith explores the moral implications of Christ's birth, baptism, death, descent into hell, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. Treated like a small panel painting rather than a decorated page, this image is characteristic of an accomplished illuminator called the Maitre François in its carefully rendered expressions and delicate use of minute stippling.
Manuscript cutting in tempera and gold leaf, and letter bâtarde inscriptions in brownish-black ink, unruled, with decorated initial, on parchment