In the jaws of Leviathan: iconographic contexts of the zoomorphic mouth of hell in the medieval imaginary

Abstract

In numerous artistic depictions of themes such as Hell, the Last Judgment, the Resurrection or the Fall of the Rebel Angels, or in the illustration of certain passages from the Apocalypse, we can see the frequent inclusion of a terrible iconic motif: enormous open jaws with zoomorphic features, often ablaze, an allegorized characterization of the mouth or entrance of hell to which the condemned go, and which sometimes allow us to glimpse the terrible tortures that take place inside, or which on other occasions are transformed into the threshold of a passage through which various infernal creatures emerge from the underworld and access the earthly realm. The aim of this work is to establish the connection between this infernal figure and the legendary story of the Leviathan, a gigantic aquatic creature with very ancient origins, while analysing its literary and artistic precedents, and the most important graphic manifestations and variants of the iconographic type of infernal jaws in the western medieval imaginary.