Michelangelo 2

Michelangelo – The Last Judgment Essay, Research Paper

he Last Judgment is the altarpiece in the Sistine Chapel commissioned by Pope Clement VII. The painting proceeds from the viewer’s lower left in a circular pattern, with the resurrected presenting themselves before the Christ and the saintly witnesses and then descending to damnation at the lower right. The religious themes and influences in the painting are only partly Christian and include Biblical events synthesized with religious concepts from Michelangelo’s contemporaries. These ideas include the Norse ideas of “Hel”, neoplatonic and Greek interpretations, as well as the Apocalyptic ideas of the monk Savonarola.

Michelangelo Buonarroti , who lived from 1475 – 1564, was an Italian sculptor, painter, poet. He was a towering figure of renaissance, mannerist, and baroque art. From 1490 to 1492 he lived in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s house, where he was influenced by neoplatonic thought. This neoplatonism heavily influenced his painting of the Last Judgment. His early drawings show the influence of Giotto and Masaccio, whereas the marble reliefs of the Madonna of the Stairs and Battle of the Centaurs (both: Casa Buonarroti, Florence) show the influence of Donatello and Roman sarcophagi.

In 1494 he executed statuettes for San Petronio (Bologna), and here the monk Savonarola impressed him with his apocalyptic vision, which would later fuse with the artist’s own tragic sense of human destiny. This influence can also be found in the “Last Judgment” and its depictions of the Damned. Between 1496 and 1501, Michelangelo worked in Rome, doing the marble Bacchus (Bargello, Florence) and the exquisitely balanced Pieta (St. Peter’s, Rome). He returned to Florence in 1501, where he was commissioned to do the magnificent David (Academy, Florence). From these years date the Bruges Madonna (Notre Dame, Bruges) and the painted tondo of the Holy Family (Uffizi).

In 1505 he was ordered back to Rome by Pope Julius II to do his sepulchral monument. This was the most frustrating project of his life. Michelangelo spent a year on the gigantic bronze, which was melted for cannon shortly after its completion. Shortly after awarding the contract for the tomb, Julius commissioned the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which Michelangelo worked on from 1508 to 1512.

The ceiling is divided into three zones, the highest showing scenes from Genesis. Below are prophets and sibyls. In the lunettes and spandrels are figures identified as ancestors of Jesus or the Virgin, which seem to suggest a vision of primordial humanity. After the death of Julius II, his heirs again contracted for the execution of his monument and 30 years of litigation followed. Michelangelo had to abandon his plan for a vast mausoleum for Julius II in St. Peter’s. His colossal Moses (San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome) and the statues known as Slaves (Academy, Florence; Louvre) were to have been included.

From 1520 to 1534 he worked on the Medici Chapel (San Lorenzo, Florence) and designed the elegant, mannerist Laurentian Library of this church. A forceful contrast between contemplation and action is seen in his statues of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and his allegorical figures of Dawn, Evening, Night, and Day. In 1529 he assisted as engineer in the defense of Florence.

From 1534 to 1541, Michelangelo painted the altarpiece called the Last Judgement. Originally this piece was to be a Resurrection. Clement VII, then Pope, resolved that the subject was to be the Day of the Last Judgment. In Roman Catholic orthodoxy, this is the second of the two judgments and comes after the Apocalypse. Thus Michelangelo’s early association with Savonarola, heavily influenced his interpretation.

After working on The Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel and the Conversion of Paul and Martyrdom of Peter in the Pauline Chapel (Vatican), he devoted himself to architecture as chief architect of St. Peter’s Church. In his last years Michelangelo’s work shows a more spiritualized and abstract form, e.g., two unfinished Pieta groups and the Rondanini Pieta (Castello Sforzesco, Milan).

He thought of himself primarily as a sculptor, and a feeling for the expressive potentialities of sculptural form manifests itself in all his work. Many of his designs have survived only through his drawings, which used vigorous cross-hatching. Great collections of his drawings are in the Louvre and Uffizi.

The relgious influences and meanings of the Last Judgment are clearly expressed throughout the painting. Examination of two sections alone will illustrate the nature of these influences. Note that the Christ is not on a Judgment Throne, as would be typical in orthodox Catholicism, but is standing and rendering an active Judgment in more accord with the then personal interactive beliefs of the reform movements then sweeping the Western church.

In the section immediately to the viewer’s right and center even with and below the Christ figure are the Saints. No one knows what most individual saints looked like. There are no photographs before the nineteenth century and usually no drawings. For this reason, the artist used a symbol associated with the particular saint to identify him or her. The man in the foreground is St. Peter. We can see this because he is carrying two large keys. This is the common symbol associated with Peter. Mic