as
Minos at right (
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples).
Religious objections The Last Judgment became controversial as soon as it was seen, with disputes between critics in the Catholic
Counter-Reformation and supporters of the genius of the artist and the style of the painting. 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 following the scriptural description of the event. On a preview visit with Paul III, before the work was complete, the pope's Master of Ceremonies
Biagio da Cesena is reported by Vasari as saying that: "it was most disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns". Michelangelo immediately worked Cesena's face from memory into the scene as
Minos, Pope Paul III himself was attacked by some for commissioning and protecting the work, and came under pressure to alter if not entirely remove the
Last Judgment, which continued under his successors. 's copy; detail showing an uncensored version of
Saint Catherine at the bottom left and
Saint Blaise above her with a different head position 's repainted versions of
Saint Catherine and
Saint Blaise There were objections to the mixing of figures from pagan mythology into depictions of Christian subject matter. Besides the figures of Charon and Minos and wingless angels, the very classicized Christ was suspect: beardless Christs had in fact only finally disappeared from Christian art some four centuries earlier, but Michelangelo's figure is unmistakably Apollonian. Further objections related to failures to follow the 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 as 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. All these objections were eventually collected in a book, the
Due Dialogi published just after Michelangelo's death in 1564, by the
Dominican theologian
Giovanni Andrea Gilio (da Fabriano), who had become one of several theologians policing art during and after the Council of Trent. As well as theological objections, Gilio objected to artistic devices like
foreshortening that puzzled or distracted untrained viewers. The copy by
Marcello Venusti added the dove of the Holy Spirit above Christ, perhaps in response to Gilio's complaint that Michelangelo should have shown all the Trinity. The defences by Vasari and others of the painting evidently made some impact on clerical thinking. In 1573, when
Paolo Veronese was summoned before the Venetian Inquisition to justify his inclusion of "buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities" in what was then called a painting of the
Last Supper (later renamed as
The Feast in the House of Levi), he tried to implicate Michelangelo in a comparable breach of decorum, but was promptly rebuffed by the inquisitors, as the transcript records: Q. Does it seem suitable to you, in the Last Supper of our Lord, to represent buffoons, drunken Germans, dwarfs, and other such absurdities? A. Certainly not. Q. Then why have you done it? A. I did it on the supposition that those people were outside the room in which the Supper was taking place. Q. Do you not know that in Germany and other countries infested by heresy, it is habitual, by means of pictures full of absurdities, to vilify and turn to ridicule the things of the Holy Catholic Church, in order to teach false doctrine to ignorant people who have no common sense? A. I agree that it is wrong, but I repeat what I have said, that it is my duty to follow the examples given me by my masters. Q. Well, what did your masters paint? Things of this kind, perhaps? A. In Rome, in the Pope's Chapel, Michelangelo has represented Our Lord, His Mother, Saint John, Saint Peter, and the celestial court; and he has represented all these personages nude, including the Virgin Mary [this last not true], and in various attitudes not inspired by the most profound religious feeling. Q. Do you not understand that in representing the Last Judgment, in which it is a mistake to suppose that clothes are worn, there was no reason for painting any? But in these figures what is there that is not inspired by the Holy Spirit? There are neither buffoons, dogs, weapons, nor other absurdities. ...
Revisions Some action to meet the criticism and enact the decision of the council 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. Daniele was "a sincere and fervent admirer of Michelangelo" who kept his changes to a minimum, and had to be ordered to go back and add more, and for his trouble got the nickname "Il Braghettone", meaning "the breeches maker". He also chiseled away and entirely repainted the larger part of
Saint Catherine and the entire figure of
Saint Blaise behind her. This was done because in the original version Blaise had appeared to look at Catherine's naked behind, and because to some observers the position of their bodies suggested sexual intercourse. The repainted version shows Blaise looking away from Saint Catherine, upward towards Christ. His work, beginning in the upper parts of the wall, was interrupted when
Pope Pius IV died in December 1565 and the chapel needed to be free of scaffolding for the funeral and conclave to elect the next pope.
El Greco had made a helpful offer to repaint the entire wall with a fresco that was "modest and decent, and no less well painted than the other". Further campaigns of overpainting, often "less discreet or respectful", followed in later reigns, and "the threat of total destruction ... re-surfaced in the pontificates of
Pius V,
Gregory XIII, and probably again of
Clement VIII". According to
Anthony Blunt, "rumours were current in 1936 that
Pius XI intended to continue the work". In total, nearly 40 figures had drapery added, apart from the two repainted. These additions were in
"dry" fresco, which made them easier to remove in the most recent restoration (1990–1994), when about 15 were removed, from those added after 1600. It was decided to leave 16th-century changes. At a relatively early date, probably in the 16th century, a strip of about 18 inches was lost across the whole width of the bottom of the fresco, as the altar and its backing was modified.
Artistic criticism Contemporary As well as the criticism on moral and religious grounds, there was from the start considerable criticism based on purely aesthetic considerations, which had hardly been seen at all in initial reactions to Michelangelo's
Sistine Chapel ceiling. Two key figures in the first wave of criticism were
Pietro Aretino and his friend
Lodovico Dolce, a prolific Venetian
humanist. Aretino had made considerable efforts to become as close to Michelangelo as he was to
Titian, but had always been rebuffed; "in 1545 his patience gave way, and he wrote to Michelangelo that letter on the
Last Judgment which is now famous as an example of insincere prudishness", a letter written with a view to publication. Aretino had not in fact seen the finished painting, and based his criticisms on one of the
prints that had been quickly brought to market. He "purports to represent the simple folk" in this new wider audience. However, it appears that at least the print-buying public preferred the uncensored version of the paintings, as most prints showed this well into the 17th century.
Vasari responded to this and other criticisms in the 1st edition of his
Life of Michelangelo in 1550. Dolce followed up in 1557, the year after Aretino died, with a published dialogue, ''L'Aretino'', almost certainly a collaborative effort with his friend. Many of the arguments of the theologian critics are repeated, but now in the name of decorum rather than religion, emphasizing that the particular and very prominent location of the fresco made the amount of nudity unacceptable; a convenient argument for Aretino, some of whose projects were frankly pornographic, but intended for private audiences. Dolce also complains that Michelangelo's female figures are hard to distinguish from males, and his figures show "anatomical exhibitionism", criticisms many have echoed. On these points, a long-lasting rhetorical comparison of Michelangelo and
Raphael developed, in which even supporters of Michelangelo such as Vasari participated. Raphael is held up as the exemplar of all the grace and decorum found lacking in Michelangelo, whose outstanding quality was called by Vasari his
terribiltà, the awesome, sublime or (the literal meaning) terror-inducing quality of his art. Vasari came to partly share this view by the time of the expanded 2nd edition of his
Lives, published in 1568, though he explicitly defended the fresco on several points raised by the attackers (without mentioning them), such as the decorum of the fresco and "amazing diversity of the figures", and asserted it was "directly inspired by God", and a credit to the Pope and his "future renown".
Modern In many respects, modern art historians discuss the same aspects of the work as 16th-century writers: the general grouping of the figures and rendering of space and movement, the distinctive depiction of anatomy, the nudity and use of colour, and sometimes the theological implications of the fresco. However, Bernadine Barnes points out that no 16th-century critic echoes in the slightest the view of
Anthony Blunt that: "This fresco is the work of a man shaken out of his secure position, no longer at ease with the world, and unable to face it directly. Michelangelo does not now deal directly with the visible beauty of the physical world." At the time, continues Barnes, "it was censured as the work of an arrogant man, and it was justified as a work that made celestial figures more beautiful than natural". Many other modern critics take approaches similar to Blunt's, emphasizing Michelangelo's "tendency away from the material and towards the things of the spirit" in his last decades. In theology, the
Second Coming of Christ ended space and time. Quite apart from the question of decorum, the rendering of anatomy has been often discussed. Writing of "energy" in the nude figure,
Kenneth Clark has: The twist into depth, the struggle to escape from the here and now of the picture plane, which had always distinguished Michelangelo from the Greeks, became the dominating rhythm of his later works. That colossal nightmare, the Last Judgment, is made up of such struggles. It is the most overpowering accumulation in all art of bodies in violent movement" Of the figure of Christ, Clark says: "Michelangelo has not tried to resist that strange compulsion which made him thicken a torso until it is almost square."
S.J. Freedberg commented that "The vast repertory of anatomies that Michelangelo conceived for the
Last Judgment seems often to have been determined more by the requirements of art than by compelling needs of meaning, ... meant not just to entertain but to overpower us with their effects. Often, too, the figures assume attitudes of which a major sense is one of ornament." He notes that the two frescos in the
Cappella Paolina, Michelangelo's last paintings begun in November 1542 almost immediately after the
Last Judgment, show from the start a major change in style, away from grace and aesthetic effect to an exclusive concern with illustrating the narrative, with no regard for beauty. == Restoration (1980–1994) ==