Everything about The Last Judgment Michelangelo totally explained
The
Last Judgment is a
mural by
Michelangelo on the
altar wall of the
Sistine Chapel in
Vatican City. It took eight years to complete.
Michelangelo began working on it three decades after finishing the
ceiling of the chapel.
The work is massive and spans the entire wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel. It was executed from 1534 to 1541. The Last Judgment is a depiction of the
second coming of Christ and the
apocalypse. The souls of humans rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ and his Saintly entourage.
The Last Judgment was an object of a heavy dispute between
Cardinal Carafa and Michelangelo: the artist was accused of immorality and intolerable obscenity, having depicted naked figures, with genitals in evidence, inside the most important
church of
Christianity, so a
censorship campaign (known as the "Fig-Leaf Campaign") was organized by Carafa and
Monsignor Sernini (
Mantua's ambassador) to remove the frescoes. When the Pope's own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, said "it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully," and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather "for the public baths and taverns," Michelangelo worked da Cesena's semblance into the scene as
Minos, judge of the underworld (far bottom-right corner of the painting). It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff responded that his jurisdiction didn't extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain.
The genitalia in the fresco were later covered by the artist
Daniele da Volterra, whom history remembers by the derogatory nickname "Il Braghettone" ("the breeches-painter").
In the painting, Michelangelo does a self portrait depicting himself as St. Bartholomew after he'd been flayed (skinned alive) This is reflective of the feelings of contempt Michelangelo had for being commissioned to paint "The Last Judgement".
Restoration
The fresco was restored in 1993 under the supervision of curator of the Vatican Museum Frabrizio Mancinelli. The illustration reflects the restoration.
Solar Symbolism
Apart from its technical mastery, the painting is noted for its radical departures from traditional depictions of the
Last Judgement. In particular, firstly, the overall structure seems to swirl around Christ at the centre, replacing the traditional pattern of horizontal layers depicting heaven, earth and hell; and secondly, the figure of Christ himself, beardless and muscular, surrounded by light, which has often been compared to the classical sun-god
Apollo. One week before commissioning the work,
Pope Clement VII is known to have been studying the new
heliocentric cosmology of
Copernicus. There seems a real possibility that the painting is in part as an allegory of the new cosmology, with Christ as the sun in the centre of the universe.
Further Information
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