The Last Judgment () is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It is a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity. The dead rise and descend to their fates, as judged by Christ who is surrounded by prominent saints. Altogether there are over 300 figures, with nearly all the males and angels originally shown as nudes; many were later partly covered up by painted draperies, of which some remain after recent cleaning and restoration.
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 finishing the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and was nearly 67 at its completion.Hartt, 639 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.Freedberg, 471
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,Pietrangeli, 184–185 and even in the upper parts there is "a profound disturbance, tension and commotion" in the figures.Pietrangeli, 187 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.Freedberg, 471 (quoted), 473 There is an impression that all the groups of figures are circling the central figure of Christ in a huge rotary movement.Hartt, 640; Freedberg, 471
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 Hercules, Apollo, and Jupiter Fulminator", probably, in particular, the Belvedere Apollo, brought to the Vatican by Pope Julius II.Camara However, there are parallels for his pose in earlier Last Judgments, especially one in the Camposanto of Pisa, which Michelangelo would have known; here the raised hand is part of a gesture of ostentatio vulnerum ("display of the wounds"), where the resurrected Christ reveals the wounds of his Crucifixion, which can be seen on Michelangelo's figure.Pietrangeli, 185; Hall, 187; Detail from Pisa
To the left of Christ is his mother, Virgin Mary, who turns her head to look down towards the Saved, though her pose also suggests resignation. It appears that the moment has passed for her to exercise her traditional role of pleading on behalf of the dead; with John the Baptist this Deesis is a regular motif in earlier compositions.Pietrangeli, 185–186; Freedberg, 471; Barnes, 65–69; Murray, 10 Preparatory drawings show her standing and facing Christ with arms outstretched, in a more traditional intercessory posture.Barnes, 63–66
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 St. Peter, holding the keys of Heaven and perhaps offering them back to Christ, as they will no longer be needed. 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,Murray, 10 but other interpretations have become more common,Pietrangeli, 186 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 St. Bartholomew below Peter, holding the attribute of his martyrdom, his own flayed skin. The face on the skin is usually recognized as being a self-portrait of Michelangelo.Pietrangeli, 206; Hartt, 641; Camara; first recognised by Francesco La Cava, publishing in 1925 St. Lawrence is also present, along with the gridiron on which he was roasted. Also depicted is St. Catherine with a portion of the wheel on which she was supposed to have been broken, St. Sebastian, holding the bundle of arrows with which he was shot, and St. Blaise with two metal combs that were used to tear the flesh off his back. Many others, even of the larger saints, are difficult to identify. Ascanio Condivi, Michelangelo's tame authorized biographer, says that all Twelve Apostles are shown around Christ.
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 Charon, who ferried souls to the Underworld in classical mythology (and Dante), brings them to land beside the entrance to Hell; his threatening them with his oar is a direct borrowing from Dante. Satan, the traditional Christian devil, is not shown but another classical figure, Minos, supervises the admission of the Damned into Hell; this was his role in Dante's Inferno. He is generally agreed to have been given the features of Biagio da Cesena, a critic of Michelangelo in the Papal court.Pietrangeli, 187–190; Freedberg, 471
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.Pietrangeli, 189; Camara
Choice of subject
The Last Judgment was a traditional subject for large church frescos, but it was unusual to place it at the east end, over the altar. The traditional position was on the west wall, over the main doors at the back of a church, so that the congregation took this reminder of their options away with them on leaving. It might be either painted on the interior, as for example by Giotto at the Arena Chapel, or in a sculpted tympanum on the exterior.Hall, 186–187; Pietrangeli, 181; Hartt, 640; Hughes However, a number of late medieval panel paintings, mostly altarpieces, were based on the subject with similar compositions, although adapted to a horizontal picture space. These include the Beaune Altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden and ones by artists such as Fra Angelico, Hans Memling and Hieronymus Bosch. Many aspects of Michelangelo's composition reflect the well-established traditional Western depiction, but with a fresh and original approach.Pietrangeli, 182–184
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).Hall, 187; Hartt, 640; Hughes 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.Hartt, 640; Clark, 300–310 for a famous account of nudity in medieval religious art.
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 Resurrection of the Dead, followed in Christian eschatology by the Last Judgment, rather than the Resurrection of Jesus.Pietrangeli, 180; Hughes; Vasari, 269 Other scholars believe there was indeed a substitution of the more sombre final subject, reflecting the emerging mood of the Counter-Reformation, and an increase in the area of the wall to be covered.Freedberg, 471; Hartt, 639 (both rather older sources than those taking the contrary view, which may be relevant). A number of Michelangelo's drawings from the early 1530s develop a Resurrection of Jesus.Pietrangeli, 180; Hughes
Vasari, alone among contemporary sources, says that originally Michelangelo intended to paint the other end wall with a Fall of the Rebel Angels to match.Pietrangeli, 178–180; Vasari, 269 By April 1535 the preparation of the wall was begun, but it was over a year before painting began. Michelangelo stipulated the filling-in of two narrow windows, the removal of three cornices, and building the surface increasingly forward as it rises, to give a single uninterrupted wall surface slightly leaning out, by about 11 inches over the height of the fresco.Pietrangeli, 31, 178; Murray, 12
The preparation of the wall led to the end of more than twenty years of friendship between Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo, who tried to persuade the Pope and Michelangelo to do the painting in his preferred technique of oil on plaster, and managed to get the smooth plaster finish needed for this applied. It is possible that around this stage the idea was floated that Sebastiano would do the actual painting, to Michelangelo's designs, as they had collaborated nearly 20 years earlier. After, according to Vasari, some months of passivity, Michelangelo furiously insisted that it should be in fresco, and had the wall re-plastered in the rough arriccio needed as a base for fresco.Pietrangeli, 178; Vasari covers this in his life of Sebastiano It was on this occasion that he famously said that oil painting was "an art for women and for leisurely and idle people like Fra Sebastiano".Vasari, "Life of Sebastiano del Piombo" (near the end)