Micheal Angelo's Last Judgement

Table of Contents

Page 1: History and Philosophy

Page 2: Composition

Page 3: Iconography

Page 4: Non-Verbal Communication

Page 5: Conclusion

Page 6: Images

Page 7: Biblography

The Last Judgment

Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists of all time. He excelled in architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and engineering. He was a true Renaissance man who lived a long emotional life. In painting "The Last Judgment," Michelangelo was able to incorporate all that he had learned about the human body. He was able to show the way the body moved, as well as its displays of unrestrained passion, overwhelming grief, or endless torment. This is what makes "The Last Judgment" such a unique and exceptional work of art. Michelangelo was pessimistic in his poetry and an optimist in his artwork. Michelangelo's artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in its natural state. Michelangelo's poetry was pessimistic in his response to Strazzi even though he was complementing him. Michelangelo's sculpture brought out his optimism. Michelangelo was optimistic in completing The Tomb of Pope Julius II and persevered through its many revisions trying to complete his vision. Sculpture was Michelangelo's main goal and the love of his life. Since his art portrayed both optimism and pessimism, Michelangelo was in touch with his positive and negative sides, showing that he had a great and stable personality.

Michelangelo's artwork consisted of paintings and sculptures that showed humanity in its natural state. Michelangelo Buonarroti was called to Rome in 1505 by Pope Julius II to create for him a monumental tomb. We have no clear sense of what the tomb was to look like, since over the years it went through at least five conceptual revisions. The tomb was to have three levels; the bottom level was to have sculpted figures representing Victory and bond slaves. The second level was to have statues of Moses and Saint Paul as well as symbolic figures of the active and contemplative life-representative of the human striving for, and reception of, knowledge. The third level, it is assumed, was to have an effigy of the deceased pope. The tomb of Pope Julius II was never finished. What was finished of the tomb represents a twenty-year span of frustrating delays and revised schemes. Michelangelo had hardly begun work on the pope's tomb when Julius commanded him to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to complete the work done in the previous century under Sixtus IV.

The overall organization consists of four large triangles at the corner; a series of eight triangular spaces on the outer border; an intermediate series of figures; and nine central panels, all bound together with architectural motifs and nude male figures. The corner triangles depict heroic action in the Old Testament, while the other eight triangles depict the biblical ancestors of Jesus Christ. Michelangelo conceived and executed this huge work as a single unit. Its overall meaning is a problem. The issue has engaged historians of art for generations without satisfactory resolution. The paintings that were done by Michelangelo had been painted with the brightest colors that just bloomed the whole ceiling as one entered to look. The ceiling had been completed just a little after the Pope had died. The Sistine Chapel is the best fresco ever done.

Michelangelo embodied many characteristic qualities of the Renaissance. An individualistic, highly competitive genius sometimes to the point of eccentricity. Michelangelo was not afraid to show humanity in its natural state - nakedness; even in front of the Pope and the other religious leaders. Michelangelo portrayed life as it is, even with its troubles. Michelangelo wanted to express his own artistic ideas. The most puzzling thing about Michelangelo's ceiling design is the great number of seemingly irrelevant nude figures that he included in his gigantic fresco. Four youths frame most of the Genesis scenes. We know from historical records that various church officials objected to the many nudes, but Pope Julius gave Michelangelo artistic freedom, and eventually ruled the chapel off limits to anyone save himself, until the painting was completed. The many nude figures are referred to as Ignudi. They are naked humans, perhaps representing the naked truth. More likely, I think they represent Michelangelo's concept of the human potential for perfection. Michelangelo himself said, "Whoever strives for perfection is striving for something divine." In painting nude humans, he is suggesting the unfinished human; each of us is born nude with a mind and a body, in Neoplatonic thought, with the power to be our own shapers. Michelangelo has a very great personality for his time.

The Last Judgment (1536-1541), with which Michelangelo covered the wall, depicts Christ's second coming at the end of the world. The enormous scene is focused on the impassive figure of Christ whose right arm is poised to strike down the damned, while the left arm seems gently to call the blessed toward him. At his side is the Virgin Mary, traditionally included as a figure of mercy at the Last Judgment; she quietly looks downward toward those who emerge from their graves. The nude bodies of the saints and the figures rising to heaven are massive, perhaps to emphasize the belief that their physical bodies would be revived in a glorified state. The scene of hell in the lower right corner does not show Satan or various hellish torments as was customary, but is based instead on the Inferno, part of an early 14th-century epic poem, The Divine Comedy, by Italian writer Dante Alighieri. This and many other aspects of the Last Judgment (especially the nudity) were sharply criticized soon after the fresco was unveiled and helped it become one of the most talked about and most frequently copied works of art in the 16th century.

The largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist who was dubbed the "breeches-maker" a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew.

Although he was also given another painting commission,