It was produced as the rightmost section of a triptych of a Last Judgment scene commissioned for the town hall of Louvain, Belgium, in 1468.

[1] The Fall has been on permanent loan from the Louvre to the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille,[2][3] where it has been reunited with the Ascension since 1957.

"[7][8] Writers note how the two outer paintings function as pendants in their striking but harmonious pairing, featuring a green, earthly paradise on the left against the "contrasting shapes, color, figures and their expressions of torment"[6] in the right panel.

There, Hilde Clase writes, "in a volcanic landscape, the damned are sinking into the hell from the weight of their sins" in a "well-balanced composition.

[10] Art historians have found sources for Bouts specific choices in the work of Rogier van der Weyden[6] (for example, his Last Judgment in Beaune), from Hans Memling's treatment of the subject in Gdansk[10] and from the pictorial tradition of illuminated manuscripts[9] The composition and mood of Bouts' example were taken up by Hieronymus Bosch in his Fall of the Damned into Hell from 1490 and Simon Marmion's Visions of Tondal from 1475.