Nudes

thegetty

#ThyCaptionBe: Purgatory is Fashionable

You captioned this detail. And we’re revealing the full story now.

Divine tinder or the nudest season of Nudity’s Got Talent? Rather, it’s a depiction of purgatory.

Here’s the full story:

This is actually a scene from The Visions of Knight Tondal, a popular story of the journey of a knight’s soul through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven before returning to his earthly body. 

Here, Tondal’s soul—represented nude—and his heavenly guide encounter the souls of the “bad but not very bad.” While these souls look pretty fashionable, it was their love of worldly goods that has trapped them in the niches of a wall, exposed to wind, rain, hunger, and thirst for a time before being permitted into heaven.

#ThyCaptionBe is a celebration of modern interpretations of medieval aesthetics. You guess what the heck is going on, then we myth-bust.