Hidden Symbols Revealed: Michelangelo's The Last Judgement
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The Last Judgment is a fresco created by Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel. This work of monumental size is full of secret meanings: why is Jesus represented without a beard? Who is this man with the skin in his hand? Who is represented in the figure of a demon with donkey ears? What did Michelangelo want to communicate with this fresco?
All these questions will be answered in this article.
Table of Contents
Description
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.
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, and even in the upper parts there is a profound disturbance, tension and commotion in the figures. Some scholars interpret 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. There is an impression that all the groups of figures are circling the central figure of Christ in a huge rotary movement.
Characters
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. 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.
To the left of Christ is his mother, the 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.
Around the two central figures there is a first crown of saints, patriarchs and apostles, made up of innumerable figures connected in a dense sequence of gestures. All the main figures participate actively and emotionally in the Judgment, with facial expressions and hand gestures that show anguish, fear or upheaval before the fulfilment of humanity's destiny, involving the spectator in the immense catastrophe.
The left and right groups
It is difficult to name all these figures, though some scholars have tried, based on visible symbols. In the left portion, at the feet of Christ, are Saint Lawrence (with the grill), St Andrew, naked from behind with the cross in his hand, and St John the Baptist, in a predominant position and recognisable by his camel-hair mantle. He stands next to a boy who is difficult to identify, and in front of a lying bearded old man, perhaps a patriarch. Saint Andrew turns to involve a woman, difficult to interpret, perhaps Rachel.
In the group on the right, St Peter stands out, with the two keys of Paradise, re-presented to their only owner because they will no longer be used to open and close the gates of heaven. Next to him the other figure must be Saint Paul, with a red cloth, while the naked young man closest to Jesus is indistinguishable — hypothetically an apostle, perhaps John the Evangelist. The kneeling figure behind Peter, his face protruding at thigh level, has been dubiously referred to as St Mark.
The second crown is made up of martyrs, confessors of the Church, virgins and other blessed.
In the group on the left we see almost exclusively women: the virgins, the sibyls and the heroines of the Old Testament. The monumental woman in the foreground stands out with her breasts uncovered, with a protective gesture towards another who approaches her, embracing her hips; they have been identified as the personification of the merciful Church and a devoted follower. Among the numerous figures of this group, identification proposals are scarce and difficult to document.
The group on the right is made up of martyrs, confessors and other blessed, with a preponderance of male figures. On the extreme right, a powerful man is shown holding a cross, helped by others. He has been identified as the Cyrenean who helped Christ on the way to Calvary, or as Dismas, the good thief.
Below him rises, kneeling with one foot resting on a cloud, Saint Sebastian, holding the arrows of his martyrdom with his left arm stretched forward, while pointing to his chest with his right hand.
A little further to the left are two of the most controversial figures of the entire cycle: Saint Blaise, with the nailed combs with which he was martyred, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the broken cogwheel.
At this same height, proceeding to the left, are Saint Philip with the cross, Simon Zelota with the saw, and Longinus, seen from behind. Higher up, a full-figured bearded old man walks along with a woman beside him: perhaps Adam and Eve, or Abraham with his wife. The bearded man of whom only the bust can be seen, on the far right, is perhaps Moses.
The lower band: resurrection, ascent and hell
The band below can be divided into five parts: in the centre, the angels with trumpets and books announcing the end of time; the awakening of the dead, bottom left; the rise of the elect, top left; the expulsion of the damned, top right; and hell, bottom right.
Under the figure of Christ the Judge we see eleven wingless angels, announcing the end of time, awakening the dead with the trumpets of the Apocalypse and showing humanity the prophetic books of the Holy Scriptures that come true. Very well known are these figures of idealised beauty, rendered with extreme expressiveness — especially those who play, their cheeks swollen with breath and their eyes rolling with fatigue.
To the left, the resurrection of the bodies takes place in a wasteland; they come out of the tombs and recover their corporeality, in attitudes that well express a tiring awakening from the torpor of the abyss. We see men emerging from the earth, others pushing up the rock slabs that cover the tomb, others coming out of crevasses — sometimes dressed, sometimes naked, sometimes still composed of only the skeleton.
On the right, some figures in flight form a connection with the upper area. We see two bodies disputed between angels and devils coming out of the cave: one is picked up and held by the legs by an angel, while a horned devil tries to snatch it down by pulling its hair.
On the left, in the group of the bearded man in front of a man with a covered head, some have indicated a self-portrait of Michelangelo alongside a profile of Dante.
The eerie cave inhabited by demonic presences is positioned right in the centre, behind the altar — sometimes explained as an anti-curial polemic, but perhaps better read as the manifestation of the devil and the Antichrist before the end of time.
The upper part is occupied by a group of the elect who ascend towards the ranks of saints. Some fly, others seem propelled or carried by an uncontrollable force, still others are helped by angels.
On the opposite side, the scene is balanced by the damned who, fighting against their condemnation, are inexorably driven back to hell. It is one of the most dynamic and violent points of the entire representation, with clusters of fighting figures now emerging in the foreground under an incident light, now disappearing into dim background light. The angels beat with their fists, while the demons drag the damned towards the abyss by any means.
Isolated on the left is a seated damned man who covers his face while devils drag him down — probably an emblem of despair.
Finally, at the bottom right, is the representation of Hell, against a red sky of flames. On the left, Charon together with the demons beats and forces the damned off his boat to lead them to the infernal judge Minos, his body wrapped in the coils of a serpent. The reference to Dante's Inferno is evident in this part. The brutality of the demons and the tragedy of the sinners trigger a climax of intensity and violence. Michelangelo dwelled on the torment, remorse, despair, fear and inner anguish of each damned figure — a more psychic than physical annihilation.
Religious Objection
The Last Judgment became controversial as soon as it was seen, with disputes between critics in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and supporters of the artist's genius and style. Michelangelo was accused of being insensitive to proper decorum, in respect of nudity and other aspects of the work, and of pursuing artistic effect over the scriptural description of the event.
Further objections related to failures to follow scriptural references. The angels blowing trumpets are all in one group, whereas in the Book of Revelation they are sent to "the four corners of the earth." Christ is not seated on a throne, contrary to Scripture. Such draperies as Michelangelo painted are often shown blown by wind, but it was claimed that all weather would cease on the Day of Judgment. The resurrected are in mixed condition — some skeletons, but most appearing with their flesh intact.
Revision
Two decades after the fresco was completed, the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563 enacted a form of words that reflected the Counter-Reformation attitudes to art that had been growing in strength in the Church for some decades. The Council's decree, drafted at the last minute and generally very short, called for the removal of "every superstition," for "all lasciviousness" to be avoided, and for figures not to be "painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust."
Some action to meet the criticism had become inevitable, and the genitalia in the fresco were painted over with drapery by the Mannerist painter Daniele da Volterra, probably mostly after Michelangelo died in 1564. He also chiselled away and entirely repainted the larger part of Saint Catherine and the entire figure of Saint Blaise behind her — in the original version Saint Blaise had appeared to look at Catherine's naked figure, and to some observers the position of their bodies suggested sexual intercourse. The repainted version shows Blaise looking away from Saint Catherine, upward towards Christ.
The fresco was restored along with the Sistine vault between 1980 and 1994, under the supervision of Fabrizio Mancinelli, curator of the post-classical collections of the Vatican Museums, and Gianluigi Colalucci, head restorer at the Vatican laboratory. During the course of the restoration, about half of the censorship of the "Fig-Leaf Campaign" was removed. Numerous buried details, caught under decades of smoke and grime, were revealed. It was discovered that the figure of Biagio da Cesena, painted as Minos, was being bitten in the genitalia by a coiled snake.
Hidden Symbols
In the figure of Minos, Michelangelo portrayed the Pope's Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, who, after observing the work in progress, was shocked by the naked and contorted bodies, calling them suitable for thermal baths rather than a papal chapel. Michelangelo, who as we know did not like to practise portraiture, made an exception this time: he portrayed Cesena as an infernal judge, with donkey ears and a snake which, instead of helping him judge the damned, punishes him by biting his sexual organ.
This man is Saint Bartholomew, who was martyred after being skinned alive. He is holding not only the knife used to flay him, but his own flesh, too. It's widely believed that the face on the skin is a self-portrait of Michelangelo, while Bartholomew's own face has been suggested as a possible portrait of Pietro Aretino, Michelangelo's sworn enemy.
According to one school of thought, the descending figures in The Last Judgment may correspond to the seven deadly sins: the man in the centre of the group, upside down, shows a bag with money and two keys hanging from his cloak, a symbol of greed and attachment to earthly goods to the last; the damned man on the right, with his head covered and taken by the testicles, is a symbol of the sin of lust.
There were objections to the mixing of pagan mythology into Christian subject matter. Besides Charon, Minos and the wingless angels, the very classicised Christ was suspect: beardless Christs had only finally disappeared from Christian art four centuries earlier, but Michelangelo's figure is unmistakably Apollonian.
Other existing artworks had to be demolished to make way for The Last Judgment, including The Assumption of Mary by Renaissance artist Pietro Perugino and two of Michelangelo's own earlier works, the Ancestors of Christ lunettes. Portions of Perugino's Moses and Adoration of the Kings cycles were also covered by the fresco.
Interpretation
The work is, in a sense, a transposition on a universal level of the artist's personal doubts and torments in the face of the terrible crisis of Christianity that was undermining the roots and assumptions of Renaissance art.
From the traditional iconographic scheme — an ordered unfolding of the Judgment, without hesitation or doubt — Michelangelo passed to a system based on chaos, instability and the agonising uncertainty of a huge and overwhelming catastrophe, which still causes discomfort today, and all the more must have provoked it in the eyes of his shocked contemporaries.
For some scholars, the deepest meaning of the image is the vision of the shipwreck of a sorrowful humanity which, after the collapse of the last intellectual and moral shelters, has no choice but to await with trepidation the fulfilment of the promise of resurrection. The human storm and chaos of the painting lend themselves well to representing the tormented religiosity of those years, characterised by theological and political contrasts between Catholics and Protestants, and Michelangelo's solution does not hide the sense of profound anguish towards the last sentence.
The Geometry
Arranging heaven and earth with geometric shapes comes from the medieval tradition of a geometer God. Michelangelo built this fresco working in both two and three dimensions.
The fresco has a three-dimensionality, demonstrated by a stack of ellipses, but also a two-dimensional design, with a series of concentric circles — just as Dante imagined heaven.
From the centre of St John the Baptist and St Peter, we can draw two circles. From their intersection, Christ appears, contained in the mandorla. If we draw another circle, we can see that the angels with trumpets are also contained within this balanced form.
In doing so, it is as if Michelangelo had traced a set of gears, with which to make The Last Judgment work. The angels are arranged on a triangular base pointing upwards at Christ; but looking closer, another downward-facing triangle can be formed, interlocking with the first. The angels sit at the centre, between the saved and the damned, making the composition balance like a scale.
