1850
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Heaven and Hell is a 1850 unspecified by Octave Tassaert, a French Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A young woman stands between an angel above and a devil below, her face turned toward us. Around her, souls rise to heaven or fall into flames. Tassaert painted this in 1850s France, when religion still shaped daily life. The woman’s calm gaze pulls you in—she’s not scared, just caught in the middle. If you like this mix of drama and quiet faces, look up *chiaroscuro*—the way light and dark create tension.
This painting focuses upon the struggle between good and evil for the soul of a young woman. Looking out at the viewer, she is shown in the upper center of the composition, immediately below an angel and directly above Satan. At the upper right Saint Michael—holding scales for weighing the goodness of souls—admits the blessed to Heaven. Below, the Damned struggle to avoid the fiery pits of Hell and the demons that will torment them for eternity. At the time Tassaert painted this work, France was undergoing considerable political upheaval. In 1848, the country was wracked by a civil war…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Nicolas François Octave Tassaert (Paris, 26 July 1800 – Paris, 24 April 1874) was a French painter of portraits and genre, religious, historical and allegorical paintings, as well as a lithographer and engraver.
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