The Fall of the Damned by Peter Paul Reubens

Peter Paul Reubens (1577 - 1640) was a prolific Flemish painter with a majority of his subjects being mostly religious and mythological with some portraits and landscapes; his works exhibit a very strong adherence to the Baroque artistic style. The baroque style, in art, uses over exaggerated motion, and clear interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, and exuberance, and grandeur(Wikipedia). Also, the use of dramatic lighting and dark(chiaroscuro) is used to influence the expressed tension and drama.  This style as expressed by Reubens, is clearly seen in the Fall of the Damned(The Fall of the Rebel Angels) circa 1620.

In the Fall of the Damned, at the top of the painting, the Archangel Michael is flowing into a beam of light shining downward, and is forcing the rebel angels down out of heaven.  As the light streams downward, a pillar of bodies forms showing rebel angels pulling other souls down with them.  Women are being shown in various phases of pleasure and torture after giving into sin, and men's flesh are being pulled off.  At the bottom, the painting becomes darker and the souls are more deformed and grotesque.  It depicts parts of the Book of Revelation, 12:7-9,  "Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it."

The main appeal of  the work is the amount of life one can sense emanating from the painting.  The one lone solitary angel forces the mass of fallen souls downward in to the pit.  The change of color from light to a scarlet red then to dark, creates a flow and motion that the senses can follow.  "The real content of the artist's paintings, whether religious or secular, is the purposeful humans will that makes its own way through a solitary combat with the universe.  It enlivens all that is around it, and subordinates all parts of the work to the expression of this basic idea."  Varshavskaya, Maria; Yegorova, Xenia (2014-03-10). Peter Paul Rubens (Best of...) (Kindle Location 392). Parkstone International. Kindle Edition.


 

Fall of the Damned



Women, who have given in to sin, are being pulled away by rebel angels