The Last Judgement Michelangelo

Michelangelo was the greatest master of the human figure in the Renaissance and in his detailed masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel he proved that he was exactly that. The Last Judgment was a monumental piece of artwork that has so many expressive meanings all elaborately placed together to make one huge masterpiece. Michelangelo embodies different stories combined into one that all have separate religious meaning. He expressed the church reform and shows nudity that was not highly accepted; on the other hand this fresco resembles naturalistic and real characters in Christianity. Michelangelo’s art is so beautifully detailed that most of his work is still famous today. Throughout the years Michelangelo thought himself more as a sculptor than
In the center of the fresco you have ‘The Resurrection of Christ’. Most images of Christ show him on the cross, Michelangelo portrays him differently, and without a beard. He has an almond-shaped glow radiating outward from him and next to him is the Virgin Mary kneeling beside him. Mary is usually shown pleading for the savior of Christ, but now she is his equal and looking downward at everyone else. It is said that the uplifting of his right hand was to show a identification of “The Congregation of the Waters.” Also in the Center you have the scene of the ‘Trumpeting Angels’. In this section you have eleven elaborately colorful angels; half of them are looking downward to raise the dead by the act of trumpeting. The small angels are the saved and the large angels are for the damned. Michelangelo did a superb job in creating the terror of this biblical moment; “Thunders and lightings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud so that all the people trembled” (Michelangelo, pg 120). That sentence explains all the horror in the sounds of the trumpets and why there should be horror. Michelangelo was very precise in the detail and positioning of the angels and their body forms. The very bottom below Christ shows ‘Hell’s mouth’; this is a more good versus evil scene. The characters are apelike monsters and in the back a horned
The martyrdoms are; Simon saws, Philips erects a cross, Blasie racks a pair of the hackles, Catherine turns a spiked wheel, Sebastian holds arrows and draws an imaginary bow, and Stephen throws a fictitious stone (A Glorious Revolution:Michelangelo, pg 84). This act of instruments explains how the Martyr’s avenge their deaths and accelerate the descent of the damned. The bottom scenes show ‘The boat of Charon and the damned with Minos’. This scene is gloomy and depicts the depths of Hell. The characters Charon and Minos are derived from Dante’s Inferno. Charon’s boat arrives at Hell’s Shore and a whole bunch of demons and terrifying creatures await the passengers. You have so many different actions happening in this scene where men are being dragged from the boat and tortured. You also have the Devil with all his evil followers awaiting the men to be dragged from the boat. To the right of the scene you have a total different story called ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’ where you have evil and good battling to save or damn the men. You have angels that are trying to pull the men away from the clutches of evil to bring them to salvation towards Christ. Throughout the piece you have angels and demons, each of them are positioned perfectly to describe the pull towards Christ in the center and Hell down below. This helps tie in all the stories into one they all feed off each other. Michelangelo so