The Last Judgement

Diego Jerez



Giotto, The Last Judgement, 1306
By DIEGO JEREZ

This is Giotto's largest work in the Arena Chapel. This extensive description of the Last Judgment in the west of the church is dominated by the large enthroned Christ as supreme Judge in a rainbow-colored mandorla in majesty at its center. The twelve apostles are surrounding Christ. In this area the archangels Michael and Raphael hold the cross in the middle. This fresco contains the Heaven, Purgatory, and the Hell. The bright gold background, Giotto’s style of painting gives the perception that Christ is showing his power.

It is possible that Dante, the great Renaissance poet and an acquaintance of Giotto's, was inspired by this depiction of Hell when he wrote The Inferno. In the book Satan is in the deepest part of hell, devouring people, like in the fresco. In the hell there is lot of individuals hanging from things that look like trees. Giotto did a really good job by presenting it, because make the viewer that the hell is cruelest place of all times.
A curious thing can be found at the bottom part of the fresco, Enrico Scrovegni the representative of the Arena Chapel, is portrayed as presenting the chapel to the Virgin Mary. 

  • 7:00 AM

Last Judgment

Alex McDonald
Giotto, Last Judgment, circa 1305
Next I saw a large white throne and the one who was sitting on it. The earth and the sky fled from his presence and there was no place for them. I saw the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and the scrolls were opened. Then another scroll was opened, the book of life. The dead were judged according to their deeds, by what was written in the scrolls. The sea gave up its dead; then Death and Hades gave up their dead. All the dead were judged according to their deeds. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the pool of fire. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the pool of fire. -Revelation 20:11-15

At the sound of the seven Angels' trumpets, fire falls from the sky, seas turn to blood, the stars darken and a passage into the abyss of Hell cracks open. Out of Hell, creeps the seven headed dragon known to the world as evil incarnate, the devil Lucifer. He flies into the sky where a woman clothed in the remaining stars gives birth. War follows. Seven plagues and four horsemen slay the sinful. And finally, when the Lamb of God has won and the dragon defeated in this final crusade, God comes down upon his white throne to judge the living and the dead. This is the Biblical Book of Revelation, or the Christian apocalypse, which Giotto portrays in his Last Judgment.

In the early 14th Century, scenes from the Book of Revelations were not commonly drawn upon for the subjects of art. But then something came along to shift some of the focus away from the four gospels or the Old Testament. This something was Dante's Inferno, which happened to be written in the vernacular Italian language, not Latin. This made the epic poem accessible to all and, consequently, Dante's Inferno became widely popular. In response, readers became more interested in the particulars of Heaven and Hell. This could have led Giotto to dedicate a whole wall of the Arena Chapel to a scene from Revelations.

However, one problem exists, Dante's Inferno may have been published after Giotto painted the Arena Chapel. The date for Last Judgment is said to be 1305, while Dante started Inferno in 1308. But the Satan figure in the lower right hand corner of Last Judgment hints that Giotto was influenced by Dante. Giotto has painted the Devil eating a sinner while two dragons off to Satan's sides devour other sinners. Dante describes the Devil having three faces and chewing on three sinners. These sinners are Judas Iscariot, Brutas, and Cassius. The imagery is not exactly the same between Giotto and Dante, but the similarities exist. One influenced the other.

If Inferno had been written by the time Giotto painted Last Judgment or not, Giotto found this painting important and made it a centerpiece in the church. Anyone exiting would be forced to see Last Judgment because of the fresco's location. This brings down the weight of the sermon upon churchgoers as it reminds them of the final trial in which they are cast into Hell or flown into Heaven, but Jesus remains the center of the action. Diagonal lines descending from the top two angels unfolding the sky and carried through by the choir of angels hit the edges of the gothic style window and collide right at Jesus' waist line.

Then an upward motion from the cross, which divides the sinners from those about to be judged, directs even more attention to Jesus. Though this is a shame, since Giotto gives excellent detail to his Hell scene with all the tiny figures being damned. Maybe more detail existed in the left side where the paint has chipped off, but that is not the focus. Jesus is the focus. His facial expression coincides with Giotto's other work in that he was one of the first artists to show emotion in his subjects. In Last Judgment, Jesus looks upon those about to be judged with a stern parental stare. Jesus wishes for his children to prosper in Heaven, but he first must play the part of the judge.

  • 10:41 PM

The Last Judgment

Michelangelo
To Those Which They Never Turned Another Cheek: 
Admiration for Paintings with Major Authority Issues 
Curated by Shweta Vadlamani
Michelangelo, The Last Judgment, 1537-1541
History required power. Precedents were set by people who wielded that power. There was one point of time when people believed that the enthroned were the only ones who could oppose the forces of society to make a change. I now proceed to write about the artistic voices who actively refuted that claim. 

“They condemned all forms of nudity in religious art, yet Michelangelo still insisted on painting every form in The Last Judgment naked as the day they were born.” I laughed at the tour guide’s phrases while attempting to hide in the shade of St. Peter’s Basilica, anything to get away from the hot, midday Roman sun. At the time, the gravity of Michelangelo’s confidence and disregard for the church did not strike me as anything extraordinary. Painters were usually self-pompous narcissists, so why should I regard Michelangelo any differently?

I had not taken any professional training in Art History yet, so I found it absolutely extraordinary when the tour guide pointed to a figure on the bottom, left side of the painting and identified him as the Pope’s own Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena.

Cesena, with a concession of papal clergymen, visited Michelangelo while the artist was doing some edits to the top half of the painting. The figures, though now shown with clothes draped over their genitalia, were originally painted as completely nude. The papal men, struck with never before having seen a representation of God’s masculinity, quickly accused Michelangelo of being “insensitive to proper decorum” and disrespecting the sanctity of the Holy Church.

Then, Cesena added with a hot-tempered flourish, that “it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamelessly” then suggested that Michelangelo scrap his work and move it rather to “the public baths or taverns.”

Michelangelo did not respond to them, only continued to paint his work.

When the painter asked the clergymen to return the very next week, however, Cesena was infuriated to find a portrait of himself, situated in the painting’s section of Hell, wrapped in a coiled snake and sporting a pair of donkey ears. Michelangelo then explained to the Master of Ceremonies that he should be honored with his inclusion in the painting, for he plays the role of Minos, judge of the underworld. Michelangelo explained that only the underworld would appreciate his quick condemnation of good souls.

Cesena complained to the pope, hoping to receive some sort of retribution. To his dismay, however, the pope only laughed and joked, "at least your managerial positions do not extend to hell… the portrait may remain all as it is.”

  • 12:00 AM