BOUTS DEMON

BOUTS DEMON

"For instance, in the lower right-hand corner, a reptilian creature grasps a sinner by the head."

Aleks Pluskowski, The Monstrous Middle Ages

In Dieric Bouts the Elder‘s Fall of the Damned (ca. 1470) (Figure 7), a motley crew of reptilian devils attack naked souls in a landscape so rocky it practically has teeth. Indeed, many of the damned are shown partially submerged into the earth; this is the endgame of their fall, which began when they were dropped here by flying devils (and were thus forced to repeat the devils‘ own prior fall from Heaven).

Marisa Mandaback, Holy Shit: Bosch’s Bluebird And The Junction Of The Scatological And The Eschatological In Late Medieval Art 

*This demon is inspired by the painting The Fall Of The Damned Into Hell (1450) by Dieric Bouts