The Descent to Hell

Between his death and resurrection, Christ was believed to descend to the underworld to free the righteous souls held since Adam - the Harrowing of Hell, a story not in the Gospels but in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Duccio shows the risen Christ, red banner aloft, striding into the cave to grasp the hand of the gray-bearded Adam while trampling the chained figure of Satan; behind press the patriarchs and kings of the Old Covenant. From the back of the Siena Maesta, it stages doctrine as a rescue, the long-awaited reaching toward the light at the mouth of the pit.