SSTEIN-Michelangelo’s Last Judgment

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment 

Hall, Marcia, After Raphael: Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, pp132-136

The painting Of Michelangelo’s last judgment reinforced the message that Rome was on the rise again. The painting is one huge scene on one massive wall of the Sistine chapel. The giant fresco took Michelangelo five years to finish.

The content behind the painting was a depiction of the second coming of Christ, the resurrection. Michelangelo’s challenges in the painting included: how he was going to depict the heavens, how he was going to make the angels look different form the humans, how to make the demons look evil without making them look to imaginative.

 In the fresco Michelangelo placed Christ in the center of the action like most renaissance art. Placed in the large composition are the dead in the lower left hand corner and hell in the lower right. The figures on Christ’s right are rising to join the saved and the figures on the other side are entering hell. Michelangelo made Christ look like earlier depictions of Christ to show a newly resurrected Christ. Christ looks to the figures in damnation as if commanding them to go to where they belong. All of the figures are extremely spiritual showing ideal strength. Michelangelo depicts the figures with new idealized and perfect bodies. If they had previously been mutilated deformed or destroyed they are now beautiful and perfect. It is possible but not certain that Michelangelo painted himself in the figure of Bartholomew to show that the old withered boy he has now would not be his last. That he will someday be re-gifted with an idealized body different than that of his earthly body.

The figures seem to be leaning in and surrounding Christ showing more engagement that other paintings of the last judgment. In surrounding god it shows the figures choice in following god or sin. They all have a choice.

Michelangelo made a huge shift from traditions in this painting by depicting the angels without wings and making them look more human like. The bodies must all be nude according to Michelangelo, to shed distinction and to discard placement in society. The figures originally had no clothing or drapery. 

Hall, Marcia, After Raphael: Reception of the Last Judgment  pp189-193

 Michelangelo’s last judgment had many objections because of the nudity depicted in the fresco. Pope Paul considered having the fresco destroyed. Changes were made by Daniel da Volterra. He added loincloths to the offending parts of the figures during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The clothing was never removed because they were thought to hold an important place in history.

 The images were thought to have violated the second commandment,”you shall not make for yourself any graven image.”

Gilio had written harsh things about Michelangelo’s painting. How nothing was right, from the image of Christ to the sequence of events in the painting. He thought Michelangelo’s figures were showing too much contrapposto and strain. He believed the figures should be show with the right amount as in normal life, not an exaggerated twist. Gilio’s writings seemed to be a warning to all painters about what was to be expected in future paintings. Gilio was looking for a painter that didn’t exaggerate form, a humble painter that didn't have a big ego.