Christ in Judgment and the Damned

In the upper register, Christ with a golden halo and long hair sits behind a rainbow, wearing a grey robe; he raises his right hand in benediction and holds a globus cruciger in his left. Below him on earth, a man in a red tunic stands arched backward in distress above another figure lying prone in a blue tunic and red hose. To the right, a stylized, monstrous hellmouth, painted as a gaping grey beast, consumes a naked figure, whose torso and arms emerge from its fiery, red-lined throat. The illumination is bordered by intricate floral vines with dark, spiky, star-shaped blossoms and a single blue flower.

This illumination represents the late medieval preoccupation with the Last Judgment and the binary of salvation and damnation, a central theme in Christian eschatology and the Ars Moriendi tradition. It reflects the iconographic conventions found in 15th-century Books of Hours, which served as aids for private devotion and moral preparation for death.