{{Short description|Mythological entrance to Hell}} {{About|the medieval image|the punk band|Hellmouth (band)|the 2014 horror film|Hellmouth (film)}} thumb|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.<ref>[http://bp2.blogger.com/_xQwP8MNj0EA/R4l1kyLEs5I/AAAAAAAAEQE/k52KOuTH_Dg/s1600-h/Lucas+Cranach+der+J%C3%BCngere+%281515+-+1586%29-+Abendmahl+der+Protestanten+und+H%C3%B6llensturz+der+Katholiken.gif Example by Cranach, 1545]</ref> A notable late appearance is in the two versions of a painting by El Greco of about 1578.<ref>Variously called ''The Adoration of the Name of Jesus'' (National Gallery, London)[http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng6260 image] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090507123825/http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=ng6260 |date=2009-05-07 }}, ''The Dream of Philip II'' or ''Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto'' (Escurial).[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:El_Greco_056.jpg image]</ref> Political cartoons showed Napoleon leading his troops into one.<ref>[http://bp3.blogger.com/_xQwP8MNj0EA/R46yoyLEuDI/AAAAAAAAEZU/Qp53qokKvNM/s1600-h/1799.jpg from first external link]</ref> [[File:Nürnberg Lorenzkirche - Westportal 4b Jüngstes Gericht Hölle.jpg|thumb|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.<ref>[http://www.ecclsoc.org/mouthofhell.html The Ecclesiological Society] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080527094544/http://www.ecclsoc.org/mouthofhell.html |date=2008-05-27 }} ''Dooms and the mouth of hell in the late medieval period'' with pictures including two Renaissance stagings.</ref>
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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=DeVun |first=Leah |title=The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2021 |isbn=9780231195515 |pages=93–94 |language=en}}</ref>
==History== [[File:Haguenau StGeorges24b.JPG|thumb|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.<ref>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, {{ISBN|0-7011-2514-4}}. {{JSTOR|3046829}}.</ref> In the assimilation of Christianised Viking populations in northern England, pagan mythological imagery merged Christian ones, in hogback grave markers for example.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.klayperson.com/writing/hogbacks.htm |title=The Anglo-Scandinavian Hogback: A Tool for Assimilation |access-date=2008-07-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080817121332/http://www.klayperson.com/writing/hogbacks.htm |archive-date=2008-08-17 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
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.<ref name="Hoffmann85">{{cite thesis |last=Hofmann |first=Petra |date=2008 |title=Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters |page=25 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/10023/498 |work=St. Andrews Research Repository |degree=PhD |publisher=University of St Andrews |hdl=10023/498 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251206212337/https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/498 |archive-date=6 December 2025 |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref>
In the Anglo-Saxon Vercelli Homilies (4:46–48) Satan is likened to a dragon swallowing the damned:
{{verse translation|lang=ang|... ne cumaþ þa næfre of þæra wyrma seaðe & of þæs dracan ceolan þe is Satan nemned. |[they] never come out of the pit of snakes and of the throat of the dragon which is called Satan.<ref name="Hoffmann85" />}}
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:
{{quote| The whale has another trick: when he is hungry, he opens his mouth and a sweet smell comes out. The fish are tricked by the smell and they enter into his mouth. Suddenly the whale's jaws close.
Likewise, any man who lets himself be tricked by a sweet smell and led to sin will go into hell, opened by the devil—if he has followed the pleasures of the body and not those of the spirit. When the devil has brought them to hell, he clashes together the jaws, the gates of hell. No one can get out from them, just as no fish can escape from the mouth of the whale.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/mdrout/category/whale/ |title=translation by Michael DC Drout |access-date=2008-07-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080506063555/http://fred.wheatonma.edu/wordpressmu/mdrout/category/whale/ |archive-date=2008-05-06 |url-status=dead }}</ref>{{fcn|date=March 2025}}}}Later in the Middle Ages, the classical Cerberus also became associated with the image.<ref name="Hoffmann148">{{cite thesis |last=Hofmann |first=Petra |date=2008 |title=Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters |page=148 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/10023/498 |work=St. Andrews Research Repository |degree=PhD |publisher=University of St Andrews |hdl=10023/498 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251206212337/https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/498 |archive-date=6 December 2025 |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref>
===Later depictions=== [[File:KLONTZAS GEORGIOS End of 16th cent The Second Coming detail The Hell.png|thumb|250 px|right|''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.<ref name='greek1'>{{cite book |last1=Hatzidakis |first1= Manolis |title=Έλληνες Ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση (1450-1830). Τόμος 1: Αβέρκιος - Ιωσήφ |trans-title= Greek Painters after the Fall of Constantinople (1450-1830). Volume 1: Averkios - Iosif|location= Athens |publisher=Center for Modern Greek Studies, National Research Foundation |year=1987 |url=https://www.openbook.gr/ellines-zografoi-meta-tin-alosi/ |isbn=960-7916-01-8 |pages= |hdl= 10442/14844 }}</ref><ref name='greek2'>{{cite book |last1=Hatzidakis |first1= Manolis |last2= Drakopoulou |first2= Evgenia|title=Έλληνες Ζωγράφοι μετά την Άλωση (1450-1830). Τόμος 2: Καβαλλάρος - Ψαθόπουλος |trans-title= Greek Painters after the Fall of Constantinople (1450-1830). Volume 2: Kavallaros - Psathopoulos |location= Athens |publisher=Center for Modern Greek Studies, National Research Foundation |year=1997 |url=https://www.openbook.gr/ellines-zografoi-meta-tin-alosi/ |isbn=960-7916-00-X |pages=|hdl= 10442/14088 }}</ref> 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''.<ref>{{cite book |last= Siopis |first= Ioannis |author-link=|date= 2016 |title=Το θέμα της Δευτέρας Παρουσίας στις Εικόνες|trans-title= A Detailed History of the Second Coming (Last Judgment) in Greek Paintings|language = Greek |url=http://ikee.lib.auth.gr/record/286872/files/GRI-2017-18191.pdf|location= Thessaloniki, Greece |publisher=Aristotle University of Thessaloniki School of Philosophy Division of Archaeology and History |page=|isbn= }}</ref><ref name='greek2' /><ref name='greek1' />
==Gallery== <gallery widths="160px" heights="200px"> File:Ein Engel versperrt die Pforten der Unterwelt mit einem Schlüsel.jpg|Hellmouth, locked by an archangel, from the ''Winchester Psalter'' of about 1150 File:Bourges-Jaws.jpg|''Hell Mouth'' or ''Jaws of Hell'', Bourges Cathedral, ca. 12th century File:Queen Mary Apocalypse - BL Royal MS 19 B XV f. 38v Angel with key and dragon.jpg|Queen Mary Apocalypse—BL Royal MS 19 B XV f. 38v Angel with key and dragon, 1st qtr 14th century File:Folio 34r - The Last Judgement.jpg|Simplified ''Last Judgment'' from Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, c. 1440s File:El Greco - The Adoration of the Name of Jesus - WGA10433.jpg|El Greco, ''The Adoration of the Name of Jesus'', 1578–80, National Gallery </gallery>
== Citations == {{Reflist|2}}
== General references == * Hofmann Petra (2008). [http://hdl.handle.net/10023/498 ''Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters'']. PhD thesis. St Andrews, Fife, Scotland: University of St Andrews. {{oclc|944163293}}.
==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, {{ISBN|0-945636-69-5}} * Simmons, Austin. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120303013402/http://homeros.godsong.org/FRANKS_CASKET.pdf ''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.
== External links == * {{Commons category inline}}
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Category:Anglo-Saxon art Category:Cerberus Category:Christian iconography Category:Hell (Christianity) Category:History of theatre Category:Last Judgment Category:Leviathan Category:Mouth Category:Satan Category:Stage terminology