Last Judgement (Lochner)

Left wing, Martyrdom of the Apostles

Last Judgement, c. 1435. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

Right wing, Martyrdom of the Apostles

Last Judgement (German: Weltgericht) is a c. 1435 tempera-on-oak polyptych by the German artist Stefan Lochner, probably commissioned for the council chamber of City Hall of Cologne, but now broken apart.^[1] Today the outer wings, which formed a sixfold partition when extended, have been sawed off into twelve individual pictures,^[2] most of which are still extant but held in separate collections,^[3] mostly in Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt. The interior wings included the Martyrdom of the Apostles, the exterior panels comprised in part of the Saint Anthony Abbot, Mary Magdalene and a Donor, Saints Catherine, Hubert, Quirinus of Neuss, and a Donor, and Pope Cornelius.^[4] Its depiction of the Last Judgment follows many of the conventions of contemporary doom paintings, but Lochner introduces important innovations, especially in his rendering of the angel's black and flowing clothes.

The panel is first recorded in 1764, in an inventory of the Parish Church of St Lawrence, Cologne, and is now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, since it was bequeathed in 1824.