Not only is The Last Judgment painfully compressed, it seems full to bursting, as if about to spill out into our space. In the ceiling, multiple layers stand between us and the site of God’s immanence; in The Last Judgment, all barriers disappear. Even the decorative frame—a traditional Renaissance device that creates the illusion that we are looking through a window onto a three-dimensional space beyond—has been eliminated in order to provide the viewer with an experience as unmediated as possible. On the right edge of the scene, Dismas, the good thief of the Crucifixion, appears to rest his cross on one of the actual cornices that run along the walls of the chapel, heightening the illusion that the space of the painting is continuous with ours. Nothing stands between us and Christ’s righteous anger. The earlier cataclysm of the Flood pales in comparison to the ultimate catastrophe of the Apocalypse; no lawyerly covenant will save us. Even the ground beneath our feet dissolves as we are caught up in the storm. We can no longer find our proper place in space or time, since both have ceased to exist, and, torn between hope and fear, we face the Supreme Judge naked and alone, deprived of our works, stripped of our adornments, tumbling helplessly in the void.
• • •
Belief in an end time when all wrongs would be righted, the virtuous rewarded, and the wicked punished, is central to Christian eschatology. References to such a decisive moment are scattered throughout the Bible, including this passage from the Gospel of Matthew that provided theologians with much of their material and artists with much of their imagery:
[T]he sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven; then too all the peoples of the earth will beat their breasts; and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet to gather his chosen from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
In Byzantine churches, a mosaic of the Last Judgment often lined the interior of the dome; in Romanesque and Gothic basilicas the scene was often carved on the tympanum above the door, located, appropriately enough, at the western entrance, in the direction of the setting sun. Wherever it was situated, it served as a reminder to the faithful that history unfolded according to a divine plan and that each would have to answer for his sins.
Despite the rich dramatic possibilities, medieval interpretations tended to be highly schematic, parceling out the blessed and the damned in neat little rows, each assigned a specific place in the hierarchy according to merit. There was no attempt to portray the Last Judgment as an event taking place at a particular moment in time, much less that it was a calamitous rupture in the fabric of Creation. Instead, the Last Judgment presented a diagram of a well-ordered universe in which everything had its proper place in God’s eternal scheme.
One of the best examples of this approach—and one with which Michelangelo was intimately familiar—is the thirteenth-century mosaic on the interior of the dome of Florence ’s Baptistery. Here Christ sits enthroned in a circular mandorla, a distant figure of Buddha-like serenity. To either side are angelic choirs, along with the Twelve Apostles (the so-called Deësis group that mediates between the earthly and heavenly realms), a host of martyrs, and various degrees of the elect. The damned are confined to the lower right (Christ’s left), their bodies restored just in time for them to endure an eternity of abuse at the hands of their demonic captors, including a giant horned Satan who feeds these unfortunates into his gaping maw. Except for a single angel tooting his horn, there is nothing to indicate that we are witnessing a cataclysmic event. Indeed, everything about the mosaic, from the gleaming gold background to the static poses to the orderly arrangement of saints and sinners, indicates that this is a representation of the universe as it is, as it was, as it will always be, not a moment of crisis.
These earlier versions tend to be not only static but strictly hierarchical. Frozen in time, they are also rigidly stratified, perpetuating in the hereafter social distinctions that were already present in the world and that were the hallmark of a well-governed kingdom; each had a role to play and everyone knew his place. Christ is nothing if not meticulous, assaying the various degrees of virtue or vice with scientific precision. Hell tends to be more democratic and far messier than heaven, with sinners jumbled about higgledy-piggledy, as if righteousness were tied to order and sin to chaos.
In the early years of the fourteenth century, the painter Giotto reimagined the didactic symbolism of sacred painting in terms of events taking place in actual space and unfolding in real time. His protagonists do not simply present themselves to the viewers as ideal, unchanging forms; they embrace, they quarrel, they react to one another like real men and women, performing the sacred drama like actors on a stage. But even this revolutionary artist was unable to break free from convention when it came to depicting the End of Time. His Last Judgment in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua displays most of the medieval formulas, including a stratification that grows ever more rigid as we ascend toward the heavenly realms.
Taking Giotto as their point of departure, however, Renaissance artists reconceived the Last Judgment as an event unfolding in time rather than as a static pictograph encoding the eternal structure of the universe. Luca Signorelli’s magnificent frescoes in the Cathedral of Orvieto are the most accomplished Renaissance treatment before Michelangelo tackled the subject, but even he lays out the narrative piecemeal, deploying multiple panels, each telling a part of a multivalent narrative, much as Michelangelo had told the story of Creation on the Sistine Ceiling.IX Thus the saved and the damned are depicted on separate walls, while the resurrection of the dead occupies a third—all of which tends to dissipate dramatic impact. Fear and hope occupy separate zones; the lost and the saved are segregated populations, each indifferent to the other’s fate.
In fact, the Last Judgment as a subject had faded in popularity in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Renaissance Church found life on earth too pleasant to be enamored of Apocalyptic visions, and artists who excelled at making sacred dramas come alive before the astonished eyes of the viewer were on less sure ground when tackling the End of Time. The theme was too vast, too distant from everyday experience, to be captured in the more realistic idiom of the day. Perhaps the most imaginative attempt at translating the supernatural event into the language of the Renaissance came in a surprising medium and from a surprising source—a small medallion cast by Michelangelo’s old teacher from Lorenzo’s sculpture garden, Bertoldo di Giovanni. Michelangelo may well have had this modest image in the back of his mind when it came time to formulate his own, more monumental version, since his Christ bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the athletic, striding figure Bertoldo conjured in bronze.
But nothing that came before can prepare us for the thunderous impact of Michelangelo’s fresco. Covering a wall 66 feet high and half as wide, it owes its power as much to temporal compression as spatial expansion. Michelangelo does not arrange his composition in orderly tiers or distribute the action among various panels. Instead, he crams everything into a single unforgettable image, a vast whirlpool in space as clamorous and startling as the trumpet blast that awakens the dead.
III. THE FLAYED MAN
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is the most prominent monument to the tumultuous age that replaced the complacent optimism of the High Renaissance; it registers the dislocations that came about as universal but lightly held beliefs were challenged by sectarians driven by narrow dogmatism. Just as the Medici tombs enshrined the disquiet that accompanied the destruction of the old republic, The Last Judgment registered the even more disruptive religious upheaval that followed in the wake of Luther’s revolt.
As old certainties were challenged by both sides in the religious wars, the medieval version of the Last Judgment as an orderly judicial proceeding seemed inadequate. In Michelangelo’s conception, the End of Time is cataclysmic and
chaotic. The saved and the damned, the heavenly choirs and the demonic hosts, no longer inhabit separate realms but are all caught up in the same irresistible maelstrom. Michelangelo presents us with a metaphysical battleground where the fate of many is still uncertain. All decorum is lost as souls struggle like victims of a shipwreck clawing desperately for a place in the lifeboats. Some are pulled down by demons who grab any body part that presents itself, including, in one particularly vivid image, a man who is conveyed to the infernal regions by his testicles. But even the ascent to heaven involves backbreaking labor as the saved are hoisted up by angels whose muscles bulge with the strain. One individual is pulled in both directions at once, from below by a serpent who coils around his ankles, from above by an angel who reaches under his armpits in a desperate attempt to win one more soul for the celestial realm.
Michelangelo does not present a model of a perfected universe but one that is still reeling. At some point, no doubt, the universe will settle down as each finds his or her proper place within God’s scheme, but not yet. Michelangelo’s heaven is every bit as frenetic as the hell conceived by earlier artists, filled with murmuring, disoriented crowds. The elect embrace, as if congratulating each other on their close escape, but no one is secure. Many seem surprised to be here, uncertain of their status, or perhaps they are distraught about those they left behind. Even the saints appear to be gripped by fear, while the damned have yet to plumb the full depths of their despair.
Near the center of this human vortex is Jesus Christ, who strides forward with certain purpose, no longer the impassive magistrate but a powerful figure who sets the whirlwind in motion, damning with one hand while raising up the elect with the other.X His Herculean physique—so different from the serene, disembodied souls of the medieval imagination—is commensurate with the enormity of the task. In Michelangelo’s interpretation, dispensing justice is not simply a matter of assigning each man and woman to the proper sphere, but rather a violent intervention in a world resistant to God’s will. Christ is as nimble and menacing as a boxer in the ring, a metaphysical warrior every bit as belligerent as the God who unleashed the Flood.
Jesus Christ is not only the pivotal figure around which the universe seems to turn but also the most unexpected. Abandoning centuries of precedent, Michelangelo depicts him as a young beardless man who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Apollo Belvedere (a statue he knew well since it was part of the Vatican collection). The analogy is not as farfetched as it might appear. In the early days of Christianity, artists faced with giving visual form to their creed fell back on familiar precedents borrowed from their pagan counterparts. Depicting Jesus in the guise of the pagan sun god was particularly apt, since Christ in the Gospels is often compared to the sun and his teachings to the rays that illuminate the world. In returning to this ancient formula, Michelangelo plumbed the roots of his faith to recover an image of the Savior not exhausted by overuse.
Michelangelo strengthens this connection by surrounding Jesus in an aureole of light, the only sign of his supernatural power.XI Despite the superficial resemblance, however, Michelangelo’s Christ is more Zeus than Apollo. He is an angry god of storms, hurler of thunderbolts. Michelangelo has transformed Apollo’s effortless grace into a pose of awesome power; his dainty step becomes a propulsive stride. The bland expression of the pagan deity becomes the stern frown of an imperious lord, filled with righteous anger at those who have spurned the grace they’ve been offered.
Compared to his superhuman vigor, Mary appears remarkably ineffectual. Seated at the side of Jesus, a delicate flower wilting in the volcanic heat radiated by her companion, the two form one of those mismatched, uncomprehending pairs so common in Michelangelo’s treatment of the Virgin and her Son. Originally, Michelangelo had contemplated a very different composition. Early studies for The Last Judgment show Mary actively intervening on behalf of the condemned, her arms outstretched in a gesture of supplication. In the final version she no longer plays her traditional role of intercessor pleading like an attorney on behalf of her client. Instead, she turns away, bowing her head, unable to watch the unfolding horror but apparently resigned to the harsh verdict her Son pronounces. By changing the pose of this one figure, Michelangelo has tipped the scales: mercy no longer tempers justice, and forgiveness retreats in the face of divine rage. Below her, the angels hold up two books, one inscribed with the names of the saved, the other with the names of the damned. It is a sign of the times, and of Michelangelo’s own state of mind, that the book of the damned is a far heftier tome.
Mary’s transformation from impassioned advocate to passive mourner suggests Michelangelo’s pessimism about his own prospects for salvation. “So accustomed am I to sin, that heaven has denied me the grace that falls in every place,” he confesses. Michelangelo shows us what awaits a man who closes his heart to God in the despairing figure who covers his face in his hands, just above the image of Charon herding the damned to the infernal regions by beating them with his oar. Doubled over in pain, he is a tragic icon every bit as searing as the protagonist of Munch’s Scream.
This haunting figure seems to stand for all those of weak or wavering faith, among whom Michelangelo must have included himself. His own faith, though sincere, was uneasy and plagued by guilt. In both image and word he expresses his longing for communion with the divine, but this desire is constantly thwarted by feelings of moral inadequacy, just as the joy he took in the beauty of the human body was marred by his belief that the flesh was a prison from which the soul yearned to escape. He evokes the depth of his torment in one of the fresco’s most memorable images: the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew to which he has imparted his own distinctive features. The shapeless, sagging form offers a parody of old age, an unsparing self-portrait he repeats in verse a few years later when he describes himself as “the pulp in fruit compacted by its peel” and chronicles in gory detail the repulsive sights and smells of his decrepit body.
But this grotesque image is not merely a confession of self-loathing. Michelangelo had often used the metaphor of a discarded pelt to signal the soul’s release from the degradation of carnal existence. He returns to the image in a sonnet for Cavalieri, where it now takes on erotic overtones:
How I wish, my lord, that I could clothe
thy living form in my flayed skin,
like a snake who sheds his scales upon a rock
and, dying, ascends to higher life.
In each case, the flayed skin represents a kind of rebirth, either spiritual or sexual, embracing the Neoplatonic conception of the soul that, impelled by love, must discard its mortal ballast before it can begin its ascent toward God.XII
In the context of the Last Judgment, however, the idea that the spirit becomes whole only after it leaves the body behind runs into serious theological difficulties. Though philosophers like Marsilio Ficino tried to conceal the contradiction, the Platonic insistence that our physical form is perishable while only the immaterial soul endures, flies in the face of Christian teaching that we will be resurrected in our (perfected) bodies. “I believe that my Redeemer lives,” proclaims the Office for the Dead, “and that on the Last Day I shall rise from the earth, and in my flesh I shall see God, my Savior.” At the End of Time, each of us will be joined to the body he or she will inhabit throughout eternity, a ghoulish process that Michelangelo has portrayed in the bottom left-hand corner of his fresco.
By including this grotesque self-portrait, Michelangelo may wish to signal his rejection of the sterile intellectualism of his Neoplatonic past in favor of an emotionally charged faith. This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that he depicts the blessed not as ethereal phantoms but as figures whose robust physicality mocks the discarded husk he ’s become. Stretched like taffy between two metaphysical poles, his fate is still undecided. He places himself (physically at least) among the elect, but he is unique among them in not inhabiting his resurrected body. He has cast off his bodily form but has yet to win the kingdom of heaven. Sedu
ced by beauty but racked by guilt, yearning for God’s presence in his life but aware of his own unworthiness, proud of his achievement but convinced that worldly ambition is a sin, Michelangelo presents himself as a mass of contradictions that not even the Lord Himself can sort out.
• • •
In his Dialogues, Francisco de Holanda paints a picture of Michelangelo’s life in these years that seems at odds with the darker, more conflicted story that emerges from his own art and writings. Of course, it would be a mistake to take everything Holanda says at face value, since his intent was to portray an Ideal rather than to offer a biography of a particular man, but his depiction at least has the virtue of being based on firsthand knowledge. Set in the Convent of San Silvestro, near Michelangelo’s home in Macel de ’ Corvi, the Dialogues chronicle a series of conversations between Holanda, Michelangelo, and a couple of Michelangelo’s highborn friends, Vittoria Colonna—the Marchesa of Pescara—and a Sienese nobleman named Messer Lattanzio Tolomei.
The artist that Holanda presents to us is not the irascible, antisocial terror so often caricatured by his contemporaries, but an urbane man about town: a bit temperamental perhaps, but courteous, kind, and thoughtful. Busy with his projects for the pope, the great man still takes time out to meet with friends, often stopping by the gardens of the convent, where he attends pious lectures and discusses weighty matters of philosophy and artistic theory. Not only is Michelangelo thoroughly at ease in this aristocratic company, but he is accepted as a social equal, a gentleman who also happens to be a genius.
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