Michelangelo's The Last Judgment, Explained

Although plastering over someone else’s artwork to create a fresh surface might seem unconventional, for Michelangelo it was a necessity in making this world-renowned artwork. In 1534 Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco, a mural painting typically done on top of freshly laid lime plaster, in the Sistine Chapel. This fresco, which we now know as The Last Judgment, would be painted along the altar wall, taking the place of Perugino’s artwork which had lain there prior. Its completion in 1541 came after roughly five years of diligent work, featuring hundreds of human figures coming face-to-face with the biblical Second Coming of Christ. The humans in the painting demonstrate the process of resurrection, while saints encircle Christ and Mary, who sits to his right. The process starts at the bottom left corner, where the resurrected move upward from their graves toward heaven. Once they reach the top, many of these souls are pushed away by heaven’s angels toward the bottom of the painting, where hell’s tortured souls await. It is commonly believed that the church commissioned The Last Judgment to remind visitors of an ultimate justice. After Charles V, the Holy Roman emperor, and his armies wreaked havoc in Rome in 1527 and destabilized the papacy, the pope may have hoped the fresco would prevent future attempts of violence against the church. While The Last Judgment is quite popular today, at the time of its creation it was a source of great controversy. The painting’s significant amount of nudity became its biggest criticism, which would later lead to Daniele da Volterra, Michelangelo's pupil, being hired to cover much of it up. It wasn’t until the 1990s that artists restored the fresco to its original state, a sight the generations before had never witnessed.