Hellmouth

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File:Hellmouth.jpg
Miniature from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.945, f. 107r

A hellmouth, or the jaws of Hell, is the entrance to Hell envisaged as the gaping mouth of a huge monster, a subject that first appears in Anglo-Saxon art. Hellmouths are frequently included in scenes of the Last Judgment and Harrowing of Hell through the end of the Middle Ages in Europe and sometimes, during the Renaissance and later. Hellmouths appeared in polemical popular prints after the Protestant Reformation, when figures from the opposite side would be shown disappearing into the mouth.[1] A notable late appearance is in the two versions of a painting by El Greco of about 1578.[2] Political cartoons showed Napoleon leading his troops into one.[3]

File:Nürnberg Lorenzkirche - Westportal 4b Jüngstes Gericht Hölle.jpg
Nuremberg, Saint Lawrence parish church: Western portal, 1340s

Medieval theatre often included a hellmouth prop or mechanical device that was used to attempt to scare the audience by vividly dramatizing an entrance to Hell. These seem often to have featured a battlemented castle entrance, in painting usually associated with Heaven.[4]

A hellmouth was intended to remind a Christian audience of the danger of damnation. Those shown entering, or already inside, are typically shown naked, their clothing not having survived the general resurrection of the dead that is often part of the same image. Some, even if naked, wear headgear indicating their rank at the top of society, with the papal tiara, king's crown and bishop's mitre the most common. Far rarer are indications of people being non-Christian, such as the Jewish hat.[5]

History

File:Haguenau StGeorges24b.JPG
St. George's Church, Haguenau, Alsace, painted wood, 1496

According to art historian Meyer Schapiro, the oldest example of an animal-like hellmouth appears on an ivory carving of ca. 800 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Schapiro notes most examples before the 12th century are English with many showing the Harrowing of Hell, which appealed to Anglo-Saxon taste, as a successful military raid by Christ. Schapiro has speculated that the subject may have drawn from the pagan myth of the Crack of Doom, with the mouth that of the wolf-monster Fenrir, slain by Vidar, who is used as a symbol of Christ on the Gosforth Cross and other pieces of Anglo-Scandinavian art.[6] In the assimilation of Christianised Viking populations in northern England, pagan mythological imagery merged Christian ones, in hogback grave markers for example.[7]

Satan himself is often shown sitting in Hell eating the damned. According to G. D. Schmidt this is a separate image, and a hellmouth should not be considered to be the mouth of Satan, although Hofmann is inclined to disagree with this.[8]

In the Anglo-Saxon Vercelli Homilies (4:46–48) Satan is likened to a dragon swallowing the damned:

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The whale-monster Leviathan (translated from Hebrew, Job 41:1, "wreathed animal") has been equated with this description, although this is hard to confirm in the earliest appearances. However, in The Whale, an Old English poem from the Exeter Book, the mouth of Hell is compared to a whale's mouth:

Template:QuoteLater in the Middle Ages, the classical Cerberus also became associated with the image.[9]

Later depictions

File:KLONTZAS GEORGIOS End of 16th cent The Second Coming detail The Hell.png
16th Century Hellmouth by Georgios Klontzas

In general, hellmouths appear less frequently in Italy by the late 14th century. In Northern European works by Hieronymous Bosch and his followers, where the wide interior of Hell is shown, a hellmouth is sometimes included. A hellmouth appears, swallowing a bishop, at bottom left in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a famous woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (c. 1497–98).

Greek painters were the exception to the decline in the depiction of hellmouth. Painters of the Cretan School and the Heptanese School continued to depict variations of hellmouths in their Last Judgement imagery.[10][11] Georgios Klontzas (1535–1608) created a significant amount of works depicting hellmouths, some include The Last Judgment and The Last Judgement Triptych. Other works featuring hellmouth were completed by Frantzeskos Kavertzas in 1641 entitled The Last Judgment and Leos Moskos in 1653, entitled The Last Judgment.[12][11][10]

Citations

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  1. ^ Example by Cranach, 1545
  2. ^ Variously called The Adoration of the Name of Jesus (National Gallery, London)image Script error: No such module "webarchive"., The Dream of Philip II or Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto (Escurial).image
  3. ^ from first external link
  4. ^ The Ecclesiological Society Script error: No such module "webarchive". Dooms and the mouth of hell in the late medieval period with pictures including two Renaissance stagings.
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.DeVun, Leah (2021). The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press. pp. 93–94. ISBN 9780231195515.
  6. ^ Meyer Schapiro, "'Cain's Jaw-Bone that Did the First Murder'", Selected Papers, volume 3, Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art, 1980, pp. 257–259 and notes, Chatto & Windus, London, Template:ISBN. JSTOR 3046829.
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."The Anglo-Scandinavian Hogback: A Tool for Assimilation". Archived from the original on 2008-08-17. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hofmann, Petra (2008). Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters. St. Andrews Research Repository (PhD thesis). University of St Andrews. p. 25. hdl:10023/498. Archived from the original on 6 December 2025. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hofmann, Petra (2008). Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters. St. Andrews Research Repository (PhD thesis). University of St Andrews. p. 148. hdl:10023/498. Archived from the original on 6 December 2025. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
  10. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hatzidakis, Manolis (1987). Έλληνες Ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση (1450-1830). Τόμος 1: Αβέρκιος - Ιωσήφ [Greek Painters after the Fall of Constantinople (1450-1830). Volume 1: Averkios - Iosif]. Athens: Center for Modern Greek Studies, National Research Foundation. hdl:10442/14844. ISBN 960-7916-01-8.
  11. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hatzidakis, Manolis; Drakopoulou, Evgenia (1997). Έλληνες Ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση (1450-1830). Τόμος 2: Καβαλλάρος - Ψαθόπουλος [Greek Painters after the Fall of Constantinople (1450-1830). Volume 2: Kavallaros - Psathopoulos]. Athens: Center for Modern Greek Studies, National Research Foundation. hdl:10442/14088. ISBN 960-7916-00-X.
  12. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Siopis, Ioannis (2016). Το θέμα της Δευτέρας Παρουσίας στις Εικόνες [A Detailed History of the Second Coming (Last Judgment) in Greek Paintings] (PDF) (in Greek). Thessaloniki, Greece: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki School of Philosophy Division of Archaeology and History.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)

General references

Further reading

  • Schmidt, G. D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century, 1995, Selinsgrove, PA, Susquehanna University Press, 1995, Template:ISBN
  • Simmons, Austin. The Cipherment of the Franks Casket (PDF). Hellmouth (or the whale as constituting Hell) is inferred in the inscription on the front side of the Franks Casket.
  • Page Template:Sister-inline/styles.css has no content.Script error: No such module "Sister project logo". Media related to Script error: No such module "Commons link". at Wikimedia Commons

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