diff --git a/assets/src/bundles/webapp/xss-filtering.js b/assets/src/bundles/webapp/xss-filtering.js
index d5ee326f..aa4d9625 100644
--- a/assets/src/bundles/webapp/xss-filtering.js
+++ b/assets/src/bundles/webapp/xss-filtering.js
@@ -1,53 +1,63 @@
 /**
  * Copyright (C) 2019-2021  The Software Heritage developers
  * See the AUTHORS file at the top-level directory of this distribution
  * License: GNU Affero General Public License version 3, or any later version
  * See top-level LICENSE file for more information
  */
 
 import DOMPurify from 'dompurify';
 
 // we register a hook when performing XSS filtering in order to
 // possibly replace a relative image url with the one for getting
 // the image bytes from the archive content
 DOMPurify.addHook('uponSanitizeAttribute', function(node, data) {
   if (node.nodeName === 'IMG' && data.attrName === 'src') {
 
     // image url does not need any processing here
     if (data.attrValue.startsWith('data:image') ||
         data.attrValue.startsWith('http:') ||
         data.attrValue.startsWith('https:')) {
       return;
     }
 
     // get currently browsed swh object metadata
     const swhObjectMetadata = swh.webapp.getBrowsedSwhObjectMetadata();
 
     // the swh object is provided without any useful context
     // to get the image checksums from the web api
     if (!swhObjectMetadata.hasOwnProperty('directory')) {
       return;
     }
 
+    let directory;
+    // get directory from which to check path existence
+    if (swhObjectMetadata.object_type === 'directory') {
+      // case when a README is rendered in a directory view
+      directory = swhObjectMetadata.object_id;
+    } else {
+      // otherwise we browse a content, get its directory
+      directory = swhObjectMetadata.directory;
+    }
+
     // used internal endpoint as image url to possibly get the image data
     // from the archive content
-    let directoryUrl = Urls.browse_directory_resolve_content_path(swhObjectMetadata.directory);
+    let directoryUrl = Urls.browse_directory_resolve_content_path(directory);
     let path = data.attrValue;
     // strip any query parameters appended to path
     let processedPath = path;
     if (!processedPath.startsWith('/')) {
       processedPath = '/' + processedPath;
     }
     const url = new URL(window.location.origin + processedPath);
     if (url.search) {
       path = path.replace(url.search, '');
     }
     // update img src attribute with archive URL
     directoryUrl += `?path=${encodeURIComponent(path)}`;
     data.attrValue = directoryUrl;
   }
 });
 
 export function filterXSS(html) {
   return DOMPurify.sanitize(html);
 }