The Last Judgment triptych, central panel, Maiestas Domini with Archangel Michael weighing the souls

Michael's other office

Michael appears in Western art in two separate jobs, and this is the less familiar one. Beside the armoured warrior stands Michael the weigher of souls, holding the scales at the Last Judgment. The title of this entry states both registers of the panel at once: the Maiestas Domini, Christ in majesty, and beneath it the archangel weighing. That is a hierarchy written into a composition — sovereign above, officer below, the judged at the bottom.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1471 as the date and Hans Memling, filed as Flemish and Northern Renaissance. The recorded dimensions are 221 x 160 cm and the measured colour family is brown. The location is the National Museum in Gdańsk, Poland.

A panel, not a picture

The record is explicit that this is the central panel of a triptych, which matters for reading the angel. In a triptych the wings carry what the centre cannot hold, and a Last Judgment distributes its outcomes across them. The archangel with the scales sits at the hinge of that arrangement: he is the mechanism by which the two wings get their populations. Naming him as an archangel rather than an angel is not a formality here — the office of weighing belongs to a named individual in the tradition, not to the chorus.