The Last Judgment

The Last Judgment, fresco by Michelangelo completed 1536–41.

The Last Judgment is generally regarded as one of Michelangelo’s greatest masterpieces. Inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the fresco was commissioned in 1534 by Pope Clement VII (reigned 1523–34) and completed under Pope Paul III (reigned 1534–49); preparations began in 1535, painting commenced the following year, and the fresco was finally revealed on October 31, 1541. Its creation required the destruction of Perugino’s frescoes, which had previously adorned the 45 × 39-foot (13.7 × 12 m) altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.

Clement had specified that the work contain a depiction of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection, but otherwise Michelangelo had considerable liberty in subject matter, and, populating the painting with dozens of figures, he relates the triumph of good over evil. (Michelangelo included a self-portrait on the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew.) Throughout are visual references to the Divine Comedy.

Although The Last Judgment is iconic today, in its own time it was controversial. Not least of all the concerns regarding the fresco was its pervasive nudity. Biagio da Cesena, the papal master of ceremonies under Paul III, denounced the painting, saying, Giorgio Vasari records in Lives of the Artists, that it was “a very disgraceful thing to have made in so honourable a place all those nude figures showing their nakedness so shamelessly, and that it was a work not for the chapel of a Pope.” Accordingly, at the order of the Council of Trent, which forbade “lascivious” art, much of that nudity was later covered up by Michelangelo’s pupil Daniele da Volterra, nicknamed Il Braghettone (the trousers maker) for his labours, and finally uncovered again by restorers between 1980 and 1994. Certainly Michelangelo was preoccupied with the glory of the human body—as is evident throughout his oeuvre—but the nudity of figures in The Last Judgment, combined with the emotional fury of their gestures, emphasizes their vulnerability in the midst of the chaos around them.

Michelangelo groups figures to create some sense of a compositional structure, but he still fully investigates the emotional personality of each individual. This inventiveness is perhaps best exemplified by a character in the lower mid-right of the fresco, a damned soul descending to hell, who, amid the figures struggling around him, appears too horrified to resist his fate: he covers one eye with his hand and has an expression of pure terror on his face. The genius of Michelangelo was that he could explore the psychological reaction of so many characters with equal conviction.

The Last Judgment is a major tourist attraction in Rome, with an estimated 25,000 visitors a day coming to the Vatican to view it.