Michelangelo, Last Judgment (altar wall, Sistine Chapel) Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

Hi. This is Sez Zabelin.
And I'm Max Newbold.
We are Second Life correspondents for Smart History.
And here we are once again in the recreation of the Sistine Chapel,
on Vassar's campus,
and we're going to talk this time not about the ceiling,
but about the fresco that Michelangelo painted
on the wall behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel, about 25 years later,
- after the ceiling -
- after the ceiling,
"The Last Judgment."
"The Last Judgment," and from 1534 to 1541.
So, this one took about 7 years.
Now, this was actually a commission that came from not Julius II,
- No, he's dead.
- Right. But from two popes, actually.
It was Clement VII who had sort of arranged
for the back wall to be painted, the wall -
which is really critical, because it's directly
in back of and above the altar, the high altar,
where the Pope himself stands -
That's right.
- and addresses the cardinals. I mean,
there is no more sacred space, really.
Yes. Uh, it was Paul III who did the final commission, is that right?
- who comes right after Clement VII, that's right.
Okay. This is a very, very old subject.
It's one of the oldest subjects.
It's the Last Judgment; it's when Christ returns to the earth,
the time of the Second Coming,
and judges all of mankind
and separates on his left,
those who have sinned, who will go to Hell;
and those on his right, the blessed, who will go to Heaven.
So we need to think about this in terms of Christ's left and Christ's right,
as he separates the blessed from the damned.
So, this subject is probably the single most terrifying subject
that one could expect to see in the Catholic tradition
and, in fact, interestingly, it is often a subject that is painted or carved
directly over the exit of a church, so that when you leave -
- sometimes an entrance, but very often over an exit,
so that when you leave the church,
it's the last thing you see before you go back into the world,
because you know, of course,
everybody is full of good intentions in church,
but walking back into the real world,
one needs a good dose of fear,
and this would really provide that.
"Sin, and you will burn in hell."
That is basically the message of "The Last Judgment."
But you said a moment ago that it's important to understand this painting
within the context of the historical, the political context of the day.
This is being painted, again, in 1534, 1541,
and Europe is in turmoil at this moment.
Yes.
And the Catholic Church itself is threatened to its core.
It is. About 20 years before this was painted,
Luther nailed his "95 Theses" to a door of a church -
-In Northern Germany -
-in Northern Germany, quite far away, but -
- but Luther was a Catholic priest.
Yes.
But he was forcing a kind of reform.
Within the Church, yes.
And pointing to very specific practices within the Catholic Church
that he believed were corrupt.
Interestingly, and ironically perhaps,
practices that helped finance Julius II
and Michelangelo's earlier commissions -
-right, and the rebuilding of the church of St. Peter's. Right.
That's right. But that's another story.
Yes. So, the Church is in turmoil, really,
the period that we've been describing is the High Renaissance,
this embrace of the human body,
of classical antiquity;
that period is really over.
The Church is under attack.
And it's important to see this fresco in the context of an embattled church.
This is a painting that is full of a kind of anger,
and fear, and I think you're right.
I think this notion of a kind of context that is absolutely threatening
will make sense because gone is so much of the optimism
and so much of the beauty -
-the ideal beauty -
- that Michelangelo renders on the ceiling,
and instead you have a kind of absolute aggression.
Look at Christ himself in the center.
Here we have Christ who is not paying attention
to the blessed. His attention is focused on the damned.
To his left, yes.
That's right. And his hand is raised, you can actually see the stig-
you can see the holes where, which he received on the cross.
But he's about to smite the damned into Hell.
And it looks as though with his left hand,
he's pointing to his own wounds that he received on the cross,
as though he's saying, "I suffered. Now those who have sinned will suffer."
-will suffer as well.
Right.
It's almost Mary, who's under his arm, who is actually attending, in this painting, to the blessed.
But cowering beneath him, as though she can no longer help anyone.
And no longer protect -
She can no longer intercede for mankind.
Ah. That's really important.
Now, Michelangelo is still Michelangelo,
and he's still rendering Christ with a kind of massiveness
that is an expression of his divinity.
Yes.
And it's almost over the top here, almost Mannerist, actually.
It's true.
And it's almost, almost like Marvel Comics, in a sense.
I mean, look. It's muscle upon muscle in that torso.
Yes, as he strides forward.
Now, on either side of Christ are saints
and other, you know, important Old Testament figures.
And this is traditional. And in fact,
when we say left and right,
we mean lower left and lower right.
That's right. It really doesn't -
this is Heaven, when we're at this level.
And so the left, right don't really accord.
Right. And so, some of the figures that we see there,
besides Mary crouching under Christ's arm,
we see St. Lawrence, for example, holding the grill that he was burned on -
We see St. Peter, who's looking furious.
- we see St. Peter with the keys -
- He's got this key -
And this is just slightly to the bottom right of Christ.
To his left, we see a large figure of St. Bartholomew,
one of the most grotesque images rendered in this painting.
Yes. St. Bartholomew, as many early saints were,
was martyred in a really hideous way,
and Bartholomew was flayed. He was skinned alive.
And he's actually holding his own skin-
- In his left hand.
- as he holds the knife in his right, and looks up to Christ.
Right. So he holds, as most saints do, generally, the instruments of his martyrdom.
But it's so graphically rendered, to hold his own skin,
which just hangs down, is extraordinary.
And of course, there is a theory -
- in the skin of St. Bartholomew -
- that the face that is rendered in the skin
is actually a self-portrait of the artist.
I think it's not - I guess it's a theory,
but it's - I think it's something we're pretty sure about,
because that really looks like Michelan-
I mean, we know what Michelangelo looked like,
we know that Michelangelo had a kind of deformed bridge of his nose -
-that curly brown hair -
- it really looks exactly like Michelangelo there.
And it's an extraordinary idea to begin to contemplate,
what Michelangelo would have meant
to render himself in this lifeless skin.
And in the place where he's put himself.
So let's come back to that.
Okay.
So let's talk for a minute about the figures in "The Last Judgment,"
because we've talked about how that ideal beauty
is gone, and here Michelangelo's really,
it seems to me, moving away from that idea of
beauty as a connection to the Divine,
and as a way to get to the Divine,
and is instead portraying figures who are
sometimes quite ugly.
Ugly, and also their limbs are no longer graceful,
but akimbo. It seems this painting is full of activity,
but it seems as if so often, there's a kind of almost violence,
or almost a kind of chaos in the way in which the figures link together
and the movements of the limbs between them.
And their, you know, their bodies are sometimes, you know, a little bit almost deformed;
their heads are too small;
they don't have those lovely, harmonious proportions
like the figures on the ceiling.
And it's almost as though, it's always seemed to me that
Michelangelo's saying, "This is not a celebration of human beings anymore.
This is a work of art -"
- or of human beings' relationship to -
to God.
- to God, that's right. This is -
-This is a painting where the message is primary;
and he's going to do what he has to do to the figures,
to the composition, to make sure that that message,
which is, "Sin, and you will burn in Hell.
Leave the Church, betray the Church,
and you will burn in Hell for eternity."
It is a grotesque . . .
So this is an extraordinarily modern idea.
It will take hundreds of more years
for artists to be comfortable with the idea of
deforming the body in order to express -
- a message. Yes.
- a more total message. This is a very modern idea, in that sense.
Yes. And I think it's perfectly seen in the figure of St. Catherine,
who is holding a wheel, who bends forward.
Her head is too small, her arms are kind of grotesque;
the position of her body is so awkward;
there's just nothing beautiful and graceful about her,
and we can say that about so many of the figures here.
And one other thing that I'd like to talk about
with the figures of the saints, who surround Christ,
you know, Michelangelo, when he was painting these figures, he said,
wanted to show these saints to sow the seeds of faith.
And I think that showing these figures
who died these really terribly painful deaths -
St. Lawrence, St. Sebastian who died by being pierced with arrows,
St. Catherine who died on a wheel,
these men and women who gave their lives
and suffered so, simply for their faith in Christ,
that this idea that, one can believe,
one can, you know, through anything,
through all of these tests, one's faith in Christ -
- can persevere. One wonders then,
- can persevere, even in the face of death and suffering.
One wonders if that was a question that Michelangelo himself,
in his older age, is beginning to ask of himself.
Yes. And I think it's a question for this moment in time.
It is. Given the war, the suffering, the violence,
that is surrounding the Church at this time.
Right, right.
Let's take a look at some of the figures that are
a little bit lower down,
and that really speak to the narrative of the Last Judgment itself.
In some ways, we have to begin really
with the group of figures immediately below Christ -
- the angels?
- the angels blowing their golden trumpets as loudly as possible,
almost looking like - like you know, with their cheeks bulging out -
- to awaken the dead from their graves.
That's right. And if we look a little bit to the lower left
of those trumpeting angels, we can actually see Michelangelo's . . .
- or Christ's right.
- Christ's right, in those green hills -
we can actually see the dead being resurrected,
these spirits, these skeletons, that are musty
and rising from the dead.
It's a fabulous, almost literal rendering.
And then as they move up, angels reach down -
these wingless, seemingly male angels -
reach and grab them as they float up -
- Look at the group that are being pulled up by the rosary!
- and pull them up toward Heaven.
Right. As though Michelangelo's saying,
by prayer, by the strength of prayer, one can get to Heaven.
By prayer. But, it's Michelangelo, so it's tangible and physical,
and it seems as if that angel has to be
enormously physically powerful,
to actually defy gravity and pull them up.
There's strain and effort here.
Yeah. And then on the other side,
Christ's left or our right,
we have the figures who are damned to Hell.
Ah. And instead of the angels pulling them up,
we now have the angels with their fists -
-punching them down!
- beating them down!
And these figures who are trying to claw their way up,
who angels force back down.
Even as the devils below begin to claw at them
and to pull them down into Hell.
I know. It's fabulous, isn't it?
So, being pushed and pulled.
But probably the most memorable figure among this group
is that damned man.
The one who's just realized which way he's going.
The sense of human torment, the pathos in that face,
is extraordinary. There is there,
not only sadness and fear, but recognition of his own failings.
And to me, this sort of symbol of the human condition,
you know, that no matter how good we try to be,
no matter how good our intentions,
no matter how much we can see what is right,
we often do what is wrong;
but at this moment of reckoning, on this day of Christ's Second Coming,
we are judged and the decision is rendered.
And his expression so beautifully crystallizes that moment of recognition,
of all of that truth.
Yeah.
Once you get down to Hell, of course,
you don't go directly to Hell. You have to be ferried there. And Michelangelo -
In a kind of classical mythology.
That's right. Which is reiterated, in a sense made permanent, by Dante's "Inferno."
We have Charon, the ferryman,
who is beating the souls off of his boat to the shores of Hell,
because of course, they're incredibly reluctant to go.
But they're also assisted by devils whose pitchforks are harvesting those souls and bringing them down.
And pulling them in.
But perhaps my favorite -
-the far right bottom?
That's right. My favorite element in the painting
is the story just down at the bottom, where we see Minos,
who has a great serpent wrapped around his waist.
Vasari tells a great story about this little vignette.
According to Vasari, Michelangelo wanted very much
for the Pope not to bring visitors in as he painted.
But on one day, the Pope brought Biagio da Siena [sic],
a very high-minded man,
who Vasari calls a Master of Ceremonies,
in to see Michelangelo's nearly completed painting.
And the Pope asked Biagio, "What do you think?"
Well, he said quite directly, and in front of the artist,
this is totally inappropriate for the chapel of the Pope.
Too many nudes.
Too many nudes. This is appropriate for a tavern, not for the Vatican.
Michelangelo didn't like that.
But Michelangelo had his revenge.
And as soon as Biagio da Siena [sic] left with the Pope,
Michelangelo painted his face from memory in -
- [chuckling] on the face of the Satanic figure down in the lower right.
Yes, who is being devoured by a serpent.
Yes. He got his revenge!
He certainly did.
Michelangelo often got his revenge.
He did. So, now let's go back to where Michelangelo chose to put his self-portrait,
because I think that it's interesting.
He's sort of, you know, he's in that area right to the -
- on that same level as Christ,
so he's with the saints and other important figures.
But he's sort of hovering dangerously
over this lower left area.
It's not that he's just hovering dangerously,
It's that - it's that Bartholomew himself
doesn't seem to be paying much attention to the skin,
and he holds it rather nonchalantly, as if he might just-
- drop it.
- let go. And if he let go,
that skin would fall directly into the boat of Charon,
and would be transported to Hell.
Right. And it also looks to me like he's sort of midway,
that skin is sort of midway between the saving power of Christ
and the figure who - the damned -
the figure we refer to as the damned man,
who has just realized that he's going to Hell,
clearly indicating Michelangelo's own uncertainty,
which we also know from his poetry during this period,
the uncertainty of the fate of his own soul,
whether he would when he died -
because he's an old man by now,
although he would live much longer -
go to Heaven when he died, or go to Hell.
And obviously Michelangelo's great fear
is that he would go to Hell,
and Michelangelo, I think, even at this time
looking up at the ceiling that he had painted 25 years earlier,
and wondering if that early work
that celebrated human beings and the human body,
and was not so obviously in the service of the Church,
would somehow -
- damn him.
- damn him, or - not be - helpful on that day of judgment.
- you know, I see - it makes sense to me,
and I think actually that argument is strengthened
by the fact that Michelangelo chose to render himself
as an empty shell, as a skin,
because you used the term soul -
what direction Michelangelo's soul.
There is no space for soul here.
That's true.
In a sense, could this be a kind of indictment
as you spoke of, that he has spent his life creating fictions,
- that's right.
that he has spent his life creating,
in a sense, the outermost skin, a likeness -
- celebrating -
-but without substance. Right?
Because here we have no interior, no soul, no substance.
Is that what he's done?
When we saw him bring . . . breathe life into stone,
was that real life?
No, not as God creates life. But . . . but . . . but . . .
Right. And yet there's a kind of pride.
A falseness, a false pride, yes, and it must have been -
- Michelangelo as the Creator.
And his nickname, of course, is "Il Divino," "The Divine One."
And so, is this Michelangelo in his later life
beginning to rue, in a sense, his braggadocio?
To rue his -
- his pride, in his own creations.
These were the very questions that the Church itself were beginning to ask.
The Reformation, I think, caused a tremendous questioning,
and we see it here in the microcosm of one man's life;
but I think it was a set of questions
that the Church as a whole was beginning to grapple with.
Yeah. How does one get to Heaven?
Is the Church the only one way to get to Heaven?
Are the, you know, the Sacraments,
do they do what they said they would do, is the -
- Is the pomp and ceremony of the Church essential?
Or is it in some way a bar?
Right. Or is it about a more personal relationship with God?
Is it about prayer?
These are all questions that I think absolutely inform this painting,
and thus make this painting an expression of the Reformation,
and the Counter-Reformation, that will develop -
- and this - this moment of religious questioning, and turmoil.
This is a painting that is all about turmoil.
Yes.