The Fall of the Damned

A cataract of damned souls tumbles headlong out of the sky, nude bodies twisting and clawing as grimacing demons drag them down into the fires of hell. Rubens packs the tall canvas with a single plunging avalanche of flesh, muscles knotted in terror, the whole mass cascading from a bright heaven at the top to darkness below. Now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, it is his most vertiginous vision of judgment - the Baroque love of bodies in motion turned to apocalyptic ends, beauty and horror falling together in one unstoppable rush.