Michaelangelo’s “Last Judgement”

When the Last Judgement was unveiled in 1541, nearly 3 decades after the completion of
the Sistine Chapel ceiling, an awed Pope Paul III fell to his knees in prayer. The
preparation of the altar wall alone took a year. Michaelangelo ordered that the wall be
slanted inward so that dust could not accumulate.

61 years old when he began the fresco in 1536, Michael was forced to climb 6 or 7 levels
of scaffolding each day. Near the end of the project he fell, badly injuring a leg.
More than 350 figures – some wearing the faces of Michaelangelo’s contemporaries –
populate the 43-by47 foot fresco. Because drips and spills are inevitable when painting
wet plaster, Michaelangelo worked from top to bottom; starting at the upper left, above
angels who bear the Cross and the crown of thorns. Although Jesus is the focal point,
Peter and John the Baptist are rendered larger, which helps push them forward in space.

Michaelangelo acquired his intimate knowledge of anatomy by dissecting corpses. The

painting shows “all the emotions that mankind can experience”

Age 33 – M had already sculpted his marble ‘Pieta’ the crucified Christ lifeless across the
knees of Mary forever young and innocent, transcended grief. ‘David’ glowered fiercer
than any Goliath.
Now Pope Julius II commissioned M. to make him a tomb of sculptures so elaborate and
so huge as to confound the imagination, but first insisted M. paint the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel.
M. did not want the Sistine job he began in 1508. Though trained to the brush, he had
painted infrequently. Julius, whose fame came from enlarging the papal domain by the
sword, bullied him like a drill sergeant, once hitting him with a care, once threatening to
throw him off the scaffold. The artist grumbled constantly, asked for release, signed his
letters: “Michaelangelo, sculptor.”

Yet in little more than 4 years he filled the ceiling and upper walls with dozens of
compositions. On 132 by 44 feet of ceiling, he painted scenes from Genesis, backward
from the flood to the Creation.

“All Rome admired it and crowded to see it.” Recounted one contemporary of the
completed ceiling, unveiled in 1512. Another recounted, “It was such as to make
everyone speechless with astonishment.”

M. described daily stress, strain and interruptions and the effects on him,
“I live here in great toil and great weariness of body, and have no friends of any kind and
don’t want any, and haven’t the time to eat what I need.”
He then stood, day by day, head bent back, arms stretched up. He complained of paint
splattering his beard, of pain, of problems with his eyes.

M passed from 33 – 37 years old during his Sistine ordeal but aged much more – even his
images of God seem to reflect the terrible weight. Painted first, the creator of Eve looks
fairer and younger than the creator of the Sun and Moon.
It seems during the paining ordeal, he underwent a transformation. “He is given a job he
doesn’t want but at a certain point he starts to enjoy what he is doing. His designs become
less constricted. The feeling begins to change.” Says a restorer.

Contrary to popular belief, M did not lie down while painting. He wrote, “I have already
developed a goiter… that pushes my belly under my chin. My beard points to heaven…
and my brush, continuously dripping onto my face, turns it into a rich mosaic. My loins
have penetrated my belly, my rump’s a counterweight, and I walk around in vain, without
seeing where I am going… Behind, my skin is shriveled for too much bending, and I am
stretched like a Syrian bow.”

Dismissing assistants, he took almost all the burden of the painting upon himself. As he
progressed beyond the story of Noah, his designs became simpler and bolder, the colour
schemes more muted and elegant. The figures themselves echo Michaelangelo’s changing
moods, his love of ancient statuary and his abiding desire to be, above all, a sculptor.