The Last Judgment

Nearly four hundred figures fill a blue sky without any architecture or perspective to hold them; the bodies themselves make the composition. Look near Christ for Saint Bartholomew, who holds his own flayed skin, and notice that the sagging face on that skin is a self portrait of Michelangelo. At the bottom right, the figure with donkey ears and a serpent wrapped around him is Minos, given the features of the papal master of ceremonies who complained about the nudity. Many of the loincloths and drapes were added by Daniele da Volterra after the Council of Trent, earning him the nickname the breeches maker.

Pope Clement the Seventh commissioned the work in fifteen thirty three, and Michelangelo painted it for his successor Paul the Third, finishing in fifteen forty one, nearly thirty years after the ceiling. The mood has changed completely. The confident world of the ceiling has given way to anxiety, judgment and the weight of a sixty year old artist's own fears about salvation. Critics attacked it at once for indecency, and it was nearly destroyed more than once. The restoration completed in nineteen ninety four kept the later draperies as part of the wall's history. It is the last great fresco Michelangelo painted, and one of the most unsettling images in the history of art.

Did You Know? Michelangelo painted his own face onto the flayed skin held by Saint Bartholomew, a grim joke about how the commission had worn him out.