VATICAN MUSEUMS - SISTINE CHAPEL (seventh part)

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 For the first time an artist commissioned by the Pope has dared to paint an 'unpublished' face of Christ rather than his recognizable portrait.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:

On the left the Cross, the Nails and the Crown of Thorns

On the right the Column of the Flagellation, the Ladder and the Rod with the sponge soaked in vinegar

Interestingly, the angels have no wings, perhaps to give the idea that angels are not so different from men after all

 

On the left the chosen ones who try to go to heaven. Below there are bodies resurrecting from death, including the face of Girolamo Savonarola, coming out of the ground

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

At the bottom on the left characters that represent the resurrection from death, two of them (one white and one black) helped with the Rosary. In the center a group of angels blowing their triumph with books of acts pure and impure

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. John the Baptist

St. Andrew with the Cross

St. Lawrence with the gridiron

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. Sebastian with bow and arrows

St. Blaise with iron combs, repainted by Daniele da Volterra

St. Catherine of Alexandria with the wheel

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)

VATICAN MUSEUMS - SISTINE CHAPEL (sixth part)

CORNERS OF THE CENTRAL PANELS

“Ignudi” (Nudes)

Their symbolic meaning remains mysterious and, among the interpretations, there is the one that believes them representatives of the pagan world unaware of the events of Genesis behind them or the one that considers them as spiritual powers and angels, as opposed to the fallen angels and demons in bronze color framed above the pendentives

AMONG THE IGNUDI

 “Ten medallions in faux bronze” with Old Testament stories inspired by the woodcuts of the then famous Bible of Nicholas Malermi of 1490 (the first vernacular translation of the Bible and the only one for 200 years), connected to the adjacent scenes:

“Mattathias destroys the altar in Modein”, “Elijah's ascent to heaven”, “Sacrifice of Abraham”, maybe “Elisha cures Naaman of leprosy” (almost disappeared), “Death of Absalom”, “Death of Nicanor”, “Alexander the Great before the high priest in Jerusalem”, “Expulsion of Heliodorus”, “Antiochus Epiphanes falls from the chariot” and “Death of Razis”

NINE EPISODES FROM THE BOOK OF GENESIS divided into three groups:

Creation of the Universe, Creation and Fall of Man, Stories of Noah

“For Charles de Tolnay, who interprets the work in a Neoplatonic way, to begin with the drunkenness of Noah is even necessary, since the stories of Noah on the one hand and the divine act of creation on the other mark the start and end points of the 'deificatio' i.e. the bodily ascent to the spiritual essence” (Frank Zöllner)

First Group, CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

God is the only protagonist:

“Separation of Light from Darkness” where God has both the impetus of youth and the wisdom of old age, both manly vigor and female fertility, as his chest would seem to suggest

“Michelangelo must have seen a similar, explicit composition played on the same contrast in the Bible of Nicholas Malermi in 1490, when the creator, however, does not fly, but stands between a light and a dark surface” (Frank Zöllner)

“Creation of the sun, moon and plants” where the sun could symbolize Christ, and the moon the Virgin Mary

“Separation of Waters” cryptic episode but that could be representing the theme of fertility of water related to the generating power of Baptism

“The development of the monumentality of the figures are also known in many mostly male nudes (...). Nudes For example, next to the depiction of the separation of light from the darkness are significantly larger than those near the scene Drunkenness of Noah” (Frank Zöllner)

Second group, CREATION AND FALL OF MAN:

“Creation of Adam” in which God infuses the soul to Adam, uniting spirit to matter, the woman and the baby under God's left arm may represent, respectively, Eva, forerunner of the Virgin, and the Child Jesus

It took Michelangelo sixteen days to complete the fresco

It is an unusual representation of God that has given rise to various interpretations

Some even wanted to recognize in the image of God the right section of a human brain, which was certainly not unknown to Michelangelo and perhaps alludes to Neoplatonic thought

The one who found this out was the neurologist Frank Lynn Meshberger, of St. John's Medical Center in Anderson, Indiana (USA)

In an article published by the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association he described in great detail the amazing correspondences

According to Neo-Platonic thought, man is no longer seen as something casual or fortuitous, but, on the contrary, striving for a purpose, and aimed at achieving unity with the rest of matter through the intellect, the last step before the Divinity

Man thus acquires a certain dignity, precisely because he is not passive and supine to Nature: the more he is active the more he tends to perfection

“Creation of Eve” as the centerpiece of the overall scheme of the ceiling, at the precise center. She is the symbol of the foundation of the church that comes from the side wound of Christ

The church itself is symbolized by the Virgin Mary - Mary typus Ecclesiae - the new Eve, to whom the entire Sistine Chape is devoted

Adam leaning against a tree evokes the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, from whose side blood and water flowed alluding both to baptism and Eucharist

“Original sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden” where Adam on the left has a similar pose to that of Hercules who captures an apple in the garden of the Hesperides in a classical relief: perhaps they are metaphors of Jesus and Heaven

Adam grabbing the tree maybe alludes to the crucifixion and the promise of salvation

“Unlike most artists of 1400s, Michelangelo summarizes the two episodes in one scene and equips the snake not only with a human head, but also with an anthropomorphic body” (Frank Zöllner)

Third group, NOAH'S STORIES:

“Sacrifice of Noah” with ark with that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was considered a symbol of the church and for its wooden structure and also a symbol of the cross of Christ

This scene therefore prefigures the Holy Mass and highlights, with the gesture of Noah, the contrast between the acceptable and unacceptable offers

Moreover the ox and the ass, present at birth, represent the Gentiles that recognized the Messiah, the horse is another symbol of the church, while the elephant is a symbol of wisdom and of Christ himself

“Deluge” the first to be painted, and the only fresco full of figures and fine details not discernible from a distance

Above the roof of the ark the white dove mentioned in the Book of Genesis is visible

“Drunkenness of Noah”. Traditionally Noah's sin was interpreted as a second original sin, while the vine plant that he plants in the background on the left foreshadows the incarnation, the vat is a symbol of Christ's sacrifice and the pitcher and cup remind us of the Eucharist

“The frescoes of the ceiling which, thanks to the figures of the Ancestors of Christ, form a large and complex iconographic program, not only illustrate various aspects of the history of redemption, but also a genealogical continuity from the creation to the time of Julius II (...). The theme of the continuity of the papacy with the early history of Christianity was undoubtedly linked to a personal need of the patron that could be described as evident on a genealogical level: Julius II was the nephew of Sixtus IV, the pope who had built the Sistine Chapel. (...) Thus, the history of the family becomes part of the history of the popes and the work of redemption and the iconographic program culminates in the golden age of Julius II” (Frank Zöllner)

“Michelangelo rejects the perspective concept of space of the Renaissance, and with an unusual choice he doesn't foreshorten figures from below according to an illusionistic unified vision. It's all about the basic unit of classical sculpture, the single figure, if anything, associated with elements of architecture. The motion of the dramatic twists and plastic reliefs of the masses of giant bodies enhance the isolation of the figures, whose image is subjected to an act of idealization that gives them a great spiritual universal meaning: they were raised to the level of symbols of primeval forces of nature and of the fate of man who struggles between these forces, yearning for the elevation of his spirit” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)

An explosion occurred in 1797 in the Castel Sant'Angelo gunpowder depot brought down part of the sky where, as shown by sixteenth-century prints, there was a lightning strike