Which Flemish Baroque painter painted 'The Fall of the Damned'?

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Which Flemish Baroque painter painted “The Fall of the Damned”? Peter Paul Rubens painted it.

Rubens created The Fall of the Damned, also known as The Fall of the Rebel Angels, around 1620. The monumental oil painting shows the damned tumbling into an abyss while the archangel Michael and accompanying angels drive them from heaven.

Its twisting mass of bodies, dramatic foreshortening, violent movement, and strong contrasts of light and darkness are characteristic of Rubens’s dynamic Baroque style. Rather than presenting a calm biblical scene, the painting makes spiritual judgment feel physically overwhelming and theatrical.

The work is housed in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. A related preparatory drawing in black and red chalk, heightened with a gray wash, survives in the British Museum. The title can cause confusion because “The Fall of the Rebel Angels” is an alternate name, not a separate painting by another artist.

In 1959, an acid attack damaged the canvas, which was subsequently restored.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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