Last Judgment
Clement VII
Medici (1523/34) called Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1475/1564) in 1534 to complete the decoration of the Sistine Chapel with the
Last Judgment
After
Clement VII's death his successor, Paul III Farnese (1534/49), decided to
confirm Michelangelo for the job which he began only in April 1536, twenty-four
years after the ceiling
Michelangelo
painted 391 figures on a surface of about 200 m² (2,152 square feet)
He covered
the wall with another brick wall slightly tilted upward toward the chapel (26
cm - 10 inches), so that the dust would deposit less easily on the surface and
so that the distortions of perspective could be visually correct
Perhaps he
also wanted to give a greater effect of looming presence. This decision was the
reason of his quarrel with his friend Sebastiano Luciani aka Sebastiano Del
Piombo
Originally
there was the “Coronation of the Immaculate in an Assumption scene” by Pietro
Vannucci aka Pietro Perugino (about 1450/1523)
who had also painted, maybe with Domenico Ghirlandaio, the panels below with “Birth
of Jesus” and “Finding of Moses”
There were
also two lunettes with “Ancestors of Christ” by Michelangelo himself
The
official opening was on Christmas Day of 1541 after five years of work
The central
point is Christ's gesture in the act of judging
Some
scholars speculate that maybe the face of Jesus is the portrait of his beloved
pupil Tommaso Cavalieri who may have been rather portrayed in the face behind
St. Bartholomew
“This head
of Christ is reminiscent of the one of the Apollo Belvedere: the conception of
divine which it embodies is thus modeled on a pagan matrix. His face does not
reproduce the traditional model that we know from the icons of the Eastern
Church, recognizable in every fresco apse of the churches of Rome, in Raphael's
Dispute as in the Transfiguration. (...) For the first time an artist
commissioned by the Pope has dared to paint an 'unpublished' face of Christ
rather than his recognizable portrait. (...) As this could have happened just a
hundred meters away from the chapel in which the true image of Christ imprinted
on Veronica's veil was worshiped, we are not able to explain in all clarity.
(...) Art is not oriented anymore toward relics but toward archaeological finds
of antiquity, taken as examples for all forms of artistic expression. Painting
a youthful and beardless Christ is easily justified considering the Christian
art of late antiquity” (Heinrich W. Pfeiffer)
A rotary
movement affects all figures except those in the two upper lunettes with flying
angels bearing some of the symbols of the Passion:
Interestingly,
the angels have no wings, perhaps to give the idea that angels are not so
different from men after all
On the
right the damned wrapped in a spiral, below them the boat with Charon
At the
corner on the right there is the infernal judge Minos, to whom the artist, according to Vasari, gave
the appearance of Biagio da Cesena, the papal master of ceremonies who was
critical of Michelangelo
According
to a sonnet by Pasquino Minos has the appearance of Cardinal Pierluigi Farnese,
Pope Paul III's son and sodomite who raped the young Bishop of Fano, who then
killed himself in shame
Close to
Christ there is the Virgin Mary with her face down to avoid seeing his son in
the act of judging: her power of intercession is now finished
Maybe
Michelangelo represented the Virgin Mary with the face of his best friend
Vittoria Colonna who may be have been represented in the face near St. Lawrence
instead
Around Christ and the Virgin Mary there are saints:
St. Andrew
with the Cross
St. Bartholomew, maybe with the face of Pietro Aretino,
holding the skin, which depicts the face of Michelangelo
“Probably
the artist wanted to express the idea that only losing the shell represented by
the body, man could be saved from earthly torments. More recent research shows
a parallelism between the flayed skin in the hands of St. Bartholomew, and a
passage of Dante's Divine Comedy - Par, I, 19-24 - in which the flaying of
Marsyas is interpreted as a sign of divine inspiration of the artist” (Frank
Zöllner)
St. Peter, maybe with the face of Paul III, giving back to
Christ the keys of the church that has no more reason to exist
St. Blaise with iron combs, repainted by Daniele da
Volterra
Humanity is
represented nude because we will no longer be able to hide anything in the
tragic condition of human existence before the Judgment
Michelangelo
was such a living legend that no pope dared to censor the nudities in the
painting while he was alive
Eventually
in 1565, right after Michelangelo's death, his pupil Daniele
da Volterra (1509/66) was asked to cover the genitals and he was then
called for this “braghettone”, the “panty painter”
There were
other interventions in the following twenty years and many more in the
following centuries
The fresco
was finally restored in the years 1990/94 but the repainting of censorship of
the sixteenth century were left being considered historical
“With the
elimination of all architectural and spacial frameworks, and free
representation of the masses of nude figures in a structure not broken down in
scenes, nor responding to proportional representation and perspective of
Renaissance painting, Michelangelo canceled the consistency of the immense wall
of the Sistine Chapel, translating into an indefinite sky, without any
suggestion of depth, but animated by an unstoppable chain of dynamic impulses.
The Judgment expresses a tragic view of the condition and destiny of humanity,
which does not conceal the anxiety about extreme divine judgment. It interprets
the spiritual tension of those years” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti,
Antonio Giuliano)
“In this the
specificity of the talent of the great Florentine painter and sculptor is
expressed: in the fact that he applied to frescos with multiple figures an idea
that essentially comes from the sculpture of one isolated figure. Herein lies
the genius of the Last Judgment, and its difficulties for those who have tried
to imitate it” (Hermann Voss)
