The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)
The Last Judgment | |
---|---|
Italian: Il Giudizio Universale | |
Artist | Michelangelo |
Year | 1536–1541 |
Type | Fresco |
Dimensions | 13.7 m × 12 m (539.3 in × 472.4 in) |
Location | Sistine Chapel, Vatican City |
41°54′10″N 12°27′15″E / 41.90278°N 12.45417°E | |
Preceded by | Sistine Chapel ceiling |
Followed by | The Conversion of Saul |
The Last Judgment (
The work took over four years to complete between 1536 and 1541 (preparation of the altar wall began in 1535). Michelangelo began working on it 25 years after having finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and was nearly 67 at its completion.[2] He had originally accepted the commission from Pope Clement VII, but it was completed under Pope Paul III whose stronger reforming views probably affected the final treatment.[3]
In the lower part of the fresco, Michelangelo followed tradition in showing the saved ascending at the left and the damned descending at the right. In the upper part, the inhabitants of Heaven are joined by the newly saved. The fresco is more monochromatic than the ceiling frescoes and is dominated by the tones of flesh and sky. The cleaning and restoration of the fresco, however, revealed a greater chromatic range than previously apparent. Orange, green, yellow, and blue are scattered throughout, animating and unifying the complex scene.
The reception of the painting was mixed from the start, with much praise but also criticism on both religious and artistic grounds. Both the amount of nudity and the muscular style of the bodies has been one area of contention, and the overall composition another.
Description
Where traditional compositions generally contrast an ordered, harmonious heavenly world above with the tumultuous events taking place in the earthly zone below, in Michelangelo's conception the arrangement and posing of the figures across the entire painting give an impression of agitation and excitement,[4] and even in the upper parts there is "a profound disturbance, tension and commotion" in the figures.[5] Sydney J. Freedberg interprets their "complex responses" as "those of giant powers here made powerless, bound by racking spiritual anxiety", as their role of intercessors with the deity had come to an end, and perhaps they regret some of the verdicts.[6] There is an impression that all the groups of figures are circling the central figure of Christ in a huge rotary movement.[7]
At the centre of the work is Christ, shown as the individual verdicts of the Last Judgment are pronounced; he looks down towards the damned. He is beardless, and "compounded from antique conceptions of
To the left of Christ is his mother,
Surrounding Christ are large numbers of figures, the saints and the rest of the elect. On a similar scale to Christ are John the Baptist on the left, and on the right Saint Peter, holding the keys of Heaven and perhaps offering them back to Christ, as they will no longer be needed.[8] Several of the main saints appear to be showing Christ their attributes, the evidence of their martyrdom. This used to be interpreted as the saints calling for the damnation of those who had not served the cause of Christ,[12] but other interpretations have become more common,[13] including that the saints are themselves not certain of their own verdicts, and try at the last moment to remind Christ of their sufferings.
Other prominent saints include
The movements of the resurrected reflect the traditional pattern. They arise from their graves at bottom left, and some continue upwards, helped in several cases by angels in the air (mostly without wings) or others on clouds, pulling them up. Others, the damned, apparently pass over to the right, though none are quite shown doing so; there is a zone in the lower middle that is empty of persons. A boat rowed by an aggressive
In the centre above Charon is a group of angels on clouds, seven blowing trumpets (as in the Book of Revelation), others holding books that record the names of the Saved and Damned. To their right is a larger figure who has just realized that he is damned, and appears paralyzed with horror. Two devils are pulling him downwards. To the right of this devils pull down others; some are being pushed down by angels above them.[17]
Choice of subject
The
Most traditional versions have a figure of Christ in Majesty in about the same position as Michelangelo's, and even larger than his, with a greater disproportion in scale to the other figures. As here, compositions contain large numbers of figures, divided between angels and saints around Christ at the top, and the dead being judged below. Typically there is a strong contrast between the ordered ranks of figures in the top part, and chaotic and frenzied activity below, especially on the right side that leads to Hell. The procession of the judged usually begins at the bottom (viewer's) left, as here, as the resurrected rise from their graves and move towards judgment. Some pass judgment and continue upwards to join the company in heaven, while others pass over to Christ's left hand and then downwards towards Hell in the bottom right corner (compositions had difficulty incorporating Purgatory visually).[20] The damned may be shown naked, as a mark of their humiliation as devils carry them off, and sometimes the newly-resurrected too, but angels and those in Heaven are fully dressed, their clothing a main clue to the identity of groups and individuals.[21]
Before starting
The project was a long time in gestation. It was probably first proposed in 1533, but was not then attractive to Michelangelo. A number of letters and other sources describe the original subject as a "Resurrection", but it seems most likely that this was always meant in the sense of the General
The preparation of the wall led to the end of more than twenty years of friendship between Michelangelo and
The new fresco required, unlike his Sistine Chapel ceiling, considerable destruction of existing art. There was an
The structure of the chapel, built in a great hurry in the 1470s,
The new scheme for the altar wall and other changes necessitated by structural problems led to a loss of symmetry and "continuity of window-rhythms and cornices", as well as some of the most important parts of the previous iconographical schemes.[37] As shown by drawings, the initial conception for the Last Judgment was to leave the existing altarpiece and work round it, stopping the composition below the frescos of Moses and Christ.[38]
The Sistine Chapel was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, which had been the subject of Perugino's altarpiece. Once it was decided to remove this, it appears that a tapestry of the Coronation of the Virgin, a subject often linked to the Assumption, was commissioned, which was hung above the altar for important liturgical occasions in the 18th century, and perhaps from the 1540s until then. The tapestry has a vertical format (it is 4.3 by 3 metres (14.1 by 9.8 ft)), and is still in the Vatican Museums.[39] A print of 1582 shows the chapel in use, with a large cloth of roughly this shape hanging behind the altar, and a canopy over it. The cloth is shown as plain, but the artist also omits the paintings below the ceiling, and may well not have been present himself, but working from prints and descriptions.
Reception and later changes
Religious objections
The Last Judgment became controversial as soon as it was seen, with disputes between critics in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and supporters of the genius of the artist and the style of the painting. Michelangelo was accused of being insensitive to proper decorum, in respect of nudity and other aspects of the work, and of pursuing artistic effect over following the scriptural description of the event.[41]
On a preview visit with Paul III, before the work was complete, the pope's Master of Ceremonies
There were objections to the mixing of figures from pagan mythology into depictions of Christian subject matter. Besides the figures of Charon and Minos and wingless angels, the very classicized Christ was suspect: beardless Christs had in fact only finally disappeared from Christian art some four centuries earlier, but Michelangelo's figure is unmistakably Apollonian.[45]
Further objections related to failures to follow the scriptural references. The angels blowing trumpets are all in one group, whereas in the Book of Revelation they are sent to "the four corners of the earth". Christ is not seated on a throne, contrary to Scripture. Such draperies as Michelangelo painted are often shown as blown by wind, but it was claimed that all weather would cease on the Day of Judgment. The resurrected are in mixed condition, some skeletons but most appearing with their flesh intact. All these objections were eventually collected in a book, the Due Dialogi published just after Michelangelo's death in 1564, by the
Two decades after the fresco was completed, the final session of the
Every superstition shall be removed, ... all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust, ... there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God. And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop.[48]
There was an explicit decree that: "The pictures in the Apostolic Chapel should be covered over, and those in other churches should be destroyed, if they display anything that is obscene or clearly false".[49]
The defences by Vasari and others of the painting evidently made some impact on clerical thinking. In 1573, when Paolo Veronese was summoned before the Venetian Inquisition to justify his inclusion of "buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities" in what was then called a painting of the Last Supper (later renamed as The Feast in the House of Levi), he tried to implicate Michelangelo in a comparable breach of decorum, but was promptly rebuffed by the inquisitors,[50] as the transcript records:
Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities?
A. Certainly not.
Q. Then why have you done it?
A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place.
Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense?
A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters.
Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps?
A. In Rome, in the Pope's Chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, Saint John, Saint Peter, and the celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary [this last not true], and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound religious feeling.
Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. ...[51]
Revisions
Some action to meet the criticism and enact the decision of the council had become inevitable, and the genitalia in the fresco were painted over with drapery by the Mannerist painter
His work, beginning in the upper parts of the wall, was interrupted when
At a relatively early date, probably in the 16th century, a strip of about 18 inches was lost across the whole width of the bottom of the fresco, as the altar and its backing was modified.[58]
Artistic criticism
Contemporary
As well as the criticism on moral and religious grounds, there was from the start considerable criticism based on purely aesthetic considerations, which had hardly been seen at all in initial reactions to Michelangelo's
On these points, a long-lasting rhetorical comparison of Michelangelo and
Modern
In many respects, modern art historians discuss the same aspects of the work as 16th-century writers: the general grouping of the figures and rendering of space and movement, the distinctive depiction of anatomy, the nudity and use of colour, and sometimes the theological implications of the fresco. However, Bernadine Barnes points out that no 16th-century critic echoes in the slightest the view of Anthony Blunt that: "This fresco is the work of a man shaken out of his secure position, no longer at ease with the world, and unable to face it directly. Michelangelo does not now deal directly with the visible beauty of the physical world."[67] At the time, continues Barnes, "it was censured as the work of an arrogant man, and it was justified as a work that made celestial figures more beautiful than natural".[68] Many other modern critics take approaches similar to Blunt's, emphasizing Michelangelo's "tendency away from the material and towards the things of the spirit" in his last decades.[69]
In theology, the Second Coming of Christ ended space and time.[38] Despite this, "Michelangelo’s curious representation of space", where "the characters inhabit individual spaces that cannot be combined consistently", is often commented on.[70]
Quite apart from the question of decorum, the rendering of anatomy has been often discussed. Writing of "energy" in the nude figure, Kenneth Clark has:[71]
The twist into depth, the struggle to escape from the here and now of the picture plane, which had always distinguished Michelangelo from the Greeks, became the dominating rhythm of his later works. That colossal nightmare, the Last Judgment, is made up of such struggles. It is the most overpowering accumulation in all art of bodies in violent movement"
Of the figure of Christ, Clark says: "Michelangelo has not tried to resist that strange compulsion which made him thicken a torso until it is almost square."[72]
S.J. Freedberg commented that "The vast repertory of anatomies that Michelangelo conceived for the Last Judgment seems often to have been determined more by the requirements of art than by compelling needs of meaning, ... meant not just to entertain but to overpower us with their effects. Often, too, the figures assume attitudes of which a major sense is one of ornament."[73] He notes that the two frescos in the Cappella Paolina, Michelangelo's last paintings begun in November 1542 almost immediately after the Last Judgment, show from the start a major change in style, away from grace and aesthetic effect to an exclusive concern with illustrating the narrative, with no regard for beauty.[74]
Restoration (1980–1994)
Early appreciations of the fresco had focused on the colours, especially in small details, but over the centuries the build-up of dirt on the surface had largely hidden these.[75] The built-out wall led to extra deposition of soot from candles on the altar. In 1953 (admittedly in November) Bernard Berenson put in his diary: "The ceiling looks dark, gloomy. The Last Judgment even more so; ... how difficult to make up our minds that these Sistine frescoes are nowadays scarcely enjoyable in the original and much more so in photographs".[76]
The fresco was restored along with the Sistine vault between 1980 and 1994 under the supervision of Fabrizio Mancinelli, the curator of post-classical collections of the Vatican Museums and Gianluigi Colalucci, head restorer at the Vatican laboratory.[77] During the course of the restoration, about half of the censorship of the "Fig-Leaf Campaign" was removed. Numerous pieces of buried details, caught under the smoke and grime of scores of years, were revealed after the restoration. It was discovered that the fresco of Biagio de Cesena as Minos with donkey ears was being bitten in the genitalia by a coiled snake.
Inserted self-portrait
Most writers agree that Michelangelo depicted his own face in the flayed skin of
The bearded figure of Saint Bartholomew holding the skin was sometimes thought to have the features of Aretino, but open conflict between Michelangelo and Aretino did not occur until 1545, several years after the fresco's completion.[82] "Even Aretino's good friend Vasari did not recognize him."[81]
Details
-
The chapel in use in 1582; note the cloth over the altar
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Angels, trumpeting, and one with the Book of Life
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Saint Peter with his keys
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The damned soul alone
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The Cross upon which Christ was crucified, top left
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The pillar on which Christ was flogged, top right
See also
Footnotes
Notes
- ^ "The Last Judgement". Vatican Museums. Archived from the original on 29 July 2016. Retrieved 27 August 2013.
- ^ Hartt, 639
- ^ a b Freedberg, 471
- ^ Sistine, 184–185
- ^ Sistine, 187
- ^ Freedberg, 471 (quoted), 473
- ^ Hartt, 640; Freedberg, 471
- ^ a b Khan
- ^ Sistine, 185; Hall, 187; Detail from Pisa
- ^ Sistine, 185–186; Freedberg, 471; Barnes, 65–69; Murray, 10
- ^ Barnes, 63–66
- ^ Murray, 10
- ^ Sistine, 186
- ^ Sistine, 206; Hartt, 641; Khan; first recognised by Francesco_La_Cava, publishing in 1925
- ^ Barnes, 72
- ^ Sistine, 187–190; Freedberg, 471
- ^ Sistine, 189; Khan
- ^ Hall, 186–187; Sistine, 181; Hartt, 640; Hughes
- ^ Sistine, 182–184
- ^ Hall, 187; Hartt, 640; Hughes
- ^ Hartt, 640; Clark, 300–310 for a famous account of nudity in medieval religious art.
- ^ Sistine, 180; Hughes; Vasari, 269
- ^ Freedberg, 471; Hartt, 639 (both rather older sources than those taking the contrary view, which may be relevant).
- ^ Sistine, 180; Hughes
- ^ Sistine, 178–180; Vasari, 269
- ^ Sistine, 31, 178; Murray, 12
- ^ Sistine, 178; Vasari covers this in his life of Sebastiano Archived 2013-02-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Vasari, "Life of Sebastiano del Piombo" Archived 2013-02-09 at the Wayback Machine (near the end)
- ^ Sistine, 31, 34
- ^ Sistine, 51
- ^ Sistine, 32, 79
- ^ Sistine, 180
- ^ Sistine, 33
- ^ Sistine, 27–28
- ^ Sistine, 31–33
- ^ Sistine, 32–33
- ^ Sistine, 38 (quoted), 184
- ^ a b Hughes
- ^ Barnes, 65–66
- ^ a b Kren, 375
- ^ Blunt, 112–114, 118–119; Sistine, 190–198; Khan
- ^ a b Vasari, 274
- ^ Reported by Lodovico Domenichi in Historia di detti et fatti notabili di diversi Principi & huommi privati moderni (1556), p. 668
- ^ Sistine, 192–194
- ^ Clark, 61; Sistine, 190; Blunt, 114
- ^ Blunt, 112–114; Barnes, 84–86; Sistine, 192
- ^ Barnes, 84
- ^ Aldersey-Williams, Hugh (16 July 2013). "A History of the Fig Leaf". 16 July 2013. Slate. Archived from the original on 27 August 2013. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
- ^ Decision of January 21, 1564, quoted Sistine, 269, n. 35
- ^ Clark, 23
- ^ Transcript translated per Archived 2012-04-15 at the Wayback Machine Crawford, Francis Marion: "Salve Venetia". New York, 1905. Vol. II: pages 29–34.
- ^ Sistine, 193–194, 194 quoted; Freedberg, 477–485, 485 on the overpainting; Blunt, 119
- ^ Sistine, 194: Barnes, 86–87
- ^ Blunt, 119
- ^ Sistine, 194
- ^ Blunt, 119, note
- ^ Murray, 12
- ^ Sistine, 194–196; Blunt, 122–124, 123 quoted; Barnes, 74–84
- ^ Barnes, 74
- ^ Barnes, 82
- ^ Barnes, 88
- ^ Sistine, 194–196; Blunt, 122–124
- ^ Hughes; Sistine, 195–196; Blunt, 65–66; Friedländer, 17
- ^ Sistine, 194–198; Blunt, 76, 99; Vasari, 269, note on translating terribiltà/terribilità
- ^ Blunt, 99; Vasari, 276
- ^ Barnes, 71, quoting and discussing Blunt, 65
- ^ Barnes, 71
- ^ Blunt, 70–81, 70 quoted; Freedberg, 469–477
- ^ Hughes, quoted; Friedländer, 16–18; Freedberg, 473–474
- ^ Clark, 204
- ^ Clark, 61
- ^ Freedberg, 473–474
- ^ Freedberg, 475–477
- ^ Hughes; compare Hartt, 641, probably not revised to reflect the restoration.
- ^ Berenson, 34
- ^ Sistine, 5–7
- ^ Wind, 185–190, 188 quoted; Sistine, 206
- ^ Dixon, John W. Jr. "The Terror of Salvation: The Last Judgment". Archived from the original on 2007-08-14. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
- ^ Sistine, 206; Wind, 187–188
- ^ a b Bernadine Barnes, Michelangelo and the Viewer in His Times (Reaktion Books, 2017), p. 141.
- from the original on 2021-08-15. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
References
- Barnes, Bernardine, Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response, 1998, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-20549-9, google books
- Berenson, Bernard, The Passionate Sightseer, 1960, Thames & Hudson
- ISBN 0-19-881050-4
- Clark, Kenneth, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, orig. 1949, various edns., page refs from Pelican edn. of 1960
- ISBN 0-300-05587-0
- Friedländer, Walter. Mannerism and Anti-Mannerism in Italian Painting (originally in German, first edition in English, 1957, Columbia) 1965, Schocken, New York, LOC 578295
- Hall, James, Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, 1996 (2nd edn.), ISBN 0-7195-4147-6
- ISBN 0-500-23510-4
- Hughes, Anthony, "The Last Judgement", 2.iii, a), in "Michelangelo." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 22 Mar. 2017. Subscription required
- "Khan": "Last Judgment", Esperanca Camara, Khan Academy
- "Kren": Kren, Thomas; Burke, Jill; Campbell, Stephen J. (eds), The Renaissance Nude, 2018, Getty Publications, ISBN 160606584X, 9781606065846, google books
- Murray, Linda, The Late Renaissance and Mannerism, 1967, Thames and Hudson; The High Renaissance and Mannerism: Italy, The North, and Spain, 1500-1600, 1967 and 1977, Thames and Hudson
- "Sistine": Pietrangeli, Carlo, et al., The Sistine Chapel: The Art, the History, and the Restoration, 1986, Harmony Books/Nippon Television, ISBN 0-517-56274-X
- Vasari, selected & ed. George Bull, Artists of the Renaissance, Penguin 1965 (page nos. from BCA edn., 1979)
- Wind, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, 1967 edn., Peregrine Books
Further reading
- James A. Connor, The Last Judgment: Michelangelo and the Death of the Renaissance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), ISBN 978-0-230-60573-2
- ISBN 0-521-78002-0
- Loren Partridge, Michelangelo, The Last Judgment: A Glorious Restoration (New York: Abrams, 1997), ISBN 0-8109-1549-9
- Leader, A., "Michelangelo’s Last Judgment: The Culmination of Papal Propaganda in the Sistine Chapel", Studies in Iconography, xxvii (2006), pp. 103–56
- Barnes, Bernadine, "Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo's Last Judgment," in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, ed. Elizabeth C. Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), pp. 59–84 [1]
- Barnes, Bernadine, "Metaphorical Painting: Michelangelo, Dante, and the Last Judgment", Art Bulletin, 77 (1995), 64–81
- Roskill, Mark W., Dolce's Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento (New York: Published for the College Art Association of America by New York University Press, 1968; reprinted with emendations by University of Toronto Press, 2000)
External links
- Media related to Sistine Chapel - Last Judgment at Wikimedia Commons