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The Reaction to the Last Judgment

Joseph Lipa

History of Art 351

Professor Willette

April 29, 2013

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From the moment of its unveiling on All Hallow’s Eve in 1541 to its near demolition in the decades to follow, ’s famed Last Judgment evoked a reaction only surpassed in variety by the human figure it depicted. Commissioned six years before by Pope Paul III, this colossal fresco of the resurrection of the body at the end of the world spanned the altar wall of the same Sistine Chapel whose ceiling Michelangelo had painted some twenty years earlier.

Whether stunned by its intricacy, sobered by its content, or even scandalized by its apparent indecency, sixteenth-century minds could not stop discussing what was undoubtedly both the most famous and the most controversial work of its day. “This work is the true splendor of all

Italy and of artists, who come from the Hyperborean ends of the earth to see and draw it,” exclaimed Italian Painter Gian Paolo Lomazzo, nonetheless one of the fresco’s fiercest critics.”1

To be sure, neither Lomazzo nor any of Michelangelo’s contemporaries doubted his artistic skill.

On the contrary, it was precisely Michelangelo’s unparalleled ability to depict the nude human body that caused the work to be as severely criticized by some as it was highly praised by others.

While critics and acclaimers alike often varied in their motives, the polarizing response to the

Last Judgment can only be adequately understood in light of the unique religious circumstances of its time. Indeed, the controversy and eventual censorship of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel masterpiece reveals that for Europe in the late sixteenth century a distinct era was coming to a close—and another dramatically different one just beginning.

If Michelangelo had known how famous his fresco was to become, he perhaps would have been far less reluctant to begin it. Both and Ascanio Condivi,

Michelangelo’s principle biographers, imply in their Vitae that Michelangelo was originally unenthusiastic about the pope’s commission, preferring instead to keep his existing contract with the Duke of Urbino to complete the Tomb of Pope Julius II.2, 3 According to Condivi, when Paul Lipa 3 learned of this he became angry: “For thirty years now I have had this wish and, now that I am

Pope, can I not gratify it? Where is this contract? I want to tear it up.”4 Far from being dissuaded by the artist’s prior commitment, Paul resolved even harder to obtain his service. Only after journeying personally to Michelangelo’s house did the pope get his wish, and even then under the express condition that the agreement with the duke be rewritten to allow the new patronage.5

Unfortunately, additional details surrounding the commission are sparse. According to

Michelangelo scholar Anthony Hughes, “Not even a contract survives, but [Paul’s] motuproprio of 1535 which names Michelangelo as supreme artist to the papacy mentions that he is to paint

‘the altar wall of Our Chapel with the picture and history of the Last Judgment.’”6 After initial preparation of the painting surface, work on the fresco began in 1536 and ended in 1541, during which time the aged Michelangelo fell off the scaffolding on at least one occasion.7 Soon after completion, the fresco was publically displayed on October 31 when Paul celebrated a Mass for the vigil of All Saints at the main altar of the Sistine Chapel. In the words of Hughes, to the sixteenth-century Roman viewer the unveiled fresco “must have represented a shock.”8

The Last Judgment (Figure 1) depicts Michelangelo’s conception of the scene at the end of the world when all of humanity will be judged by Christ. Paralleling Christ’s own bodily resurrection, Christian doctrine holds that on the last day the bodies of the dead will rise from the ground to be reunited with their souls. According to Chapter 25 of the book of Matthew, Christ will then judge each according to his deeds:

All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. . . .Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.

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This general judgment of all of humanity at the end of time should be distinguished from an individual soul’s particular judgment at the moment of his death. The general judgment can never reverse the particular judgment, but only confirms it publically before the whole world.

According to Catholic theology, this is necessary “in order that the justice, wisdom, and mercy of

God may be glorified in the presence of all.”9

For its part, Michelangelo’s fresco represents the full deployment of the artist’s talents in depicting the dread, anticipation, glory, and terror of that fateful day. The work is best described in sections corresponding to the chronological order of the judgment. In the lower center foreground are the seven angels from Saint John’s Apocalypse blowing their trumpets to awaken the dead and summon them for judgment. Two additional angels stand nearby, together holding open a large book upon which is presumably inscribed all the deeds of humanity. Wingless, muscular, and semi-nude, the angelic figures appear unmistakably different from their popular representations in contemporary art. The next scene chronologically is the lower left of the fresco, where foreground and background alike depict the naked bodies of the dead rising in every possible contortion out of the ground. A spiritual battle ensues as the risen figures are simultaneously pulled upward towards heaven by angels and downward back into the ground by demons. Ultimately proving overpowering, the angels draw the bodies up along the side of the altar wall and eventually over to the Just Judge in the top-center of the fresco. Disproportionately oversized and prominently located, Christ is undoubtedly the center of attention (Figure 2).

Adding to his captivating size and location is his unconventional portrayal—Christ is young, beardless, and, it appears, angry. Standing on a grey cloud, his right hand is raised in judgment and his eyes are directed downward toward the damned. Even the Virgin Mary, depicted in rose and light blue immediately next to Christ, clings to him in apparent fear, as if to forestall by her Lipa 5 intercession the just wrath of her son. As Renaissance scholar Linda Murray notes, Michelangelo was no doubt inspired by the words of the Dies Irae, the hallmark funerary chant of the Catholic

Requiem Mass, which begins:

Day of wrath and doom impending, David’s word with Sibyl’s blending, Heaven and earth in ashes ending!

Oh, what fear man’s bosom rendeth, When from heaven the Judge descendeth, On whose sentence all dependeth.

Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth, Through earth’s sepulchres it ringeth, All before the throne it bringeth.

Death is struck, and nature quaking, All creation is awaking, To its Judge an answer making.10

According to Murray, it is this traditional Christian conception of judgment together with

Michelangelo’s own “vision of the horror and clamor of terror and rejoicing, expressed by his supreme ability to represent the human form in movement” that combine to make his Last

Judgment truly astounding.11

Continuing chronologically from the central reference point of Christ, the remaining areas of the fresco primarily concern the fate of those already judged. Surrounding Christ in glory are several well-known saints, identified primarily by their instruments of martyrdom.

Saint Lawrence, for example, fearlessly wields the rack upon which he was roasted alive. Saint

Bartholomew, for his part, triumphantly displays in one hand the knife with which he was flayed and in the other his skin itself, a pelt into which, oddly enough, Michelangelo incorporated his own self-portrait. Other recognizable saints are Saint John the Baptist to Christ’s right, carrying his traditional hair shirt, and Saint Peter, his mirror image on the left, holding the keys to the Lipa 6 kingdom. A few figures below and to the right, Saints Blaise of Sebaste and Catherine of

Alexandria stand atop the bottommost cluster of the gray clouds that define the lower boundary of heaven. The great majority of the elect, however, are anonymous and only recognizable as saved by their proximity to or motion toward Christ. More than the intrinsic characteristics of the figures themselves, it is rather these extrinsic features that assist the viewer in distinguishing the realm of the blessed from that of the condemned.

Accordingly, the lower right of the fresco is devoted to the doom of the damned. After having been rejected by Christ, these bodies are seen dragged down by demons to their eternal punishment in hell (Figure 3). In terror one man covers his left eye in an attempt to avoid seeing the fate he cannot escape. Another hurls headlong into the abyss surrounded by devils on every side. Despite the dramatic contrast with the blessed above, Michelangelo nevertheless incorporates some of the same stylistic conceptions into the figures of the condemned. Like the saved, the damned are depicted nude; however, it is a nudity resulting from exposure and shame as opposed to that allowed by the lack of concupiscence in heaven. Also, in a parallel similar to the saints’ portrayal with the instruments of their sanctification, several of those descending into hell are dragged down by the part of the body with which they sinned. One final artistic feature that extends to saved and damned alike is the extreme mannerism of the disorganized figures, which flail about in every possible direction.

Two other significant features of the Last Judgment take place at the extreme edges of the fresco. Continuing on the theme of the damned, the first is Michelangelo’s incorporation of classical figures into his portrayal of the underworld. Following the description of Dante’s

Inferno, the lower left corner of the fresco depicts Charon, the ancient Greek ferryman of souls, with his bark and punishing oar. Also included in the very corner of Hades is the mythical Lipa 7

Minos, Judge of the Underworld, who with the fickle ears of a donkey appears clothed with a serpent. These pagan elements which run off the bottom of the fresco are a stark contrast to the heavily Christian themes above. Nowhere is this more noticeable than at the very top of the altar wall in the two lunettes depicting the instruments of Christ’s passion. In the left lunette, countless angels arranged in physically impossible contortions work together to lift up the cross upon which Christ was crucified. The angels in the right lunette appear no less unconventional as they do the same for the pillar to which he was tied and scourged.

As a whole, then, the stunning fresco of the Last Judgment can be viewed as a visual codification of the late-Renaissance mood with regard to mannerism and theology. For

Michelangelo himself, the work further confirmed a definitive departure from the style of effortless facility, or sprezzatura, of his early career. From the resurrecting bodies to the judging

Christ to the rejoicing saved and suffering damned, it is this variety and difficulty, so characteristic of the artist’s later work, that caused Condivi to declare: “In this work

Michelangelo expressed all that the art of painting can do with the human figure, leaving out no attitude or gesture whatever.”12 Unfortunately for the aging artist, not all would be so appreciative of his undeniable artistic talent.

To be sure, the Last Judgment did receive its fair share of praise upon its presentation to the public. Perhaps the most unqualified acclaim came, unsurprisingly, from Michelangelo’s biographers. Vasari, for example, called the work “directly inspired by God”:

The Last Judgment must be recognized as the great exemplar of the grand manner of painting, directly inspired by God and enabling mankind to see the fateful results when an artist of sublime intellect infused with divine grace and knowledge appears on earth. Behind this work, bound in chains, follow all those who believe they have mastered the art of painting; the strokes with which Michelangelo outlined his figures make every intelligent and sensitive artist wonder and tremble, no matter how strong a draughtsman he may be. When other artists study the fruits of Michelangelo’s labors, they are thrown into confusion by Lipa 8

the mere thought of what manner of things all other pictures, past or future, would look like if placed side by side with this masterpiece.13

For his part, Condivi felt little need to elaborate on the “careful and well thought out” composition, “as such a quantity and variety of copies have been printed and sent everywhere.”14

He does nevertheless, and after the description that follows he repeats his initial assertion almost verbatim: “Suffice it to say that, apart from the sublime composition of the narrative, we see represented here all that nature can do with the human body.”15

It was precisely this fixation on the human figure that other contemporaries of

Michelangelo found so scandalizing. Vasari records how, even before it was completed, the work was controversial within the pope’s own inner circle. As Vasari recounts, one day while in the presence of Michelangelo the pope asked his master of ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, his opinion of the nearly-completed fresco. When Biagio denounced the work as a disgrace on account of its “shamefully” exposed nudes, Michelangelo was enraged. According to Vasari, no sooner had Biagio left than Michelangelo, determined to get revenge, “drew his portrait from memory in the figure of Minos, shown with a great serpent curled round his legs, among a heap of devils in hell.”16 Hughes adds that when Biagio protested to the pope, Paul allegedly quipped that freeing people from hell did not fall under his authority.17 Nevertheless, Biagio’s concerns only marked the beginning of a vigorous thirty-year debate surrounding the work’s decency, or lack thereof. Indeed, just three weeks after the pope’s Mass in the Sistine Chapel Cardinal Ercole

Gonzaga received a letter from his agent Nicolo Sernini summarizing the public’s initial reaction to the work. In it Sernini makes special mention of the controversy stemming from the fresco’s seemingly gratuitous nudity:

Even though the work is of such beauty as Your Illustrious Lordship may imagine, there are not lacking those who damn it. The Theatine fathers are the first to say that it is not good to have nudes displaying themselves in such a place, Lipa 9

even though he has paid great attention to this, and only in about ten out of so great a number can one see anything indecent.18

In addition to the naked figures, Sernini also cites other breaches of decorum of which the common sentiment found Michelangelo guilty. His letter continues: “Others say that he has made

Christ beardless and too young, and He does not have that majesty which is suitable for Him, and so there is no lack of talk.”19 Against this very claim Vasari defended the artist, having written in his Vita that in painting the work “Michelangelo observed all the rules of decorum, and gave his figures the appropriate expressions, attitudes, and settings.”20 Unlike Sernini, however, Vasari neither cites concurring opinions nor provides supporting examples.

Adding to the litany of disapproval was Don Miniato Pitti, an acquaintance of Vasari, who in a 1545 letter to the latter complained that Last Judgment contained “a thousand heresies, especially in the beardless skin of Saint Bartholomew, while the flayed one has a beard, which shows that it is not his own skin.”21 This critique is particularly interesting since it is today almost certain that Michelangelo did in fact intend this discrepancy.22

Of all the criticism directed toward his Last Judgment, the most devastating for

Michelangelo must have been that of Pietro Aretino. Arguably the most influential Italian writer of his day, Aretino was famous for penning and subsequently publishing strongly worded letters to the most important people of his day.23 In 1545, he directed one of these scathing letters to

Michelangelo:

In seeing once more the whole design of your Day of Judgment, I have been permitted to appreciate the illustrious grace and agreeable beauty of ’s invention. At the same time, as a baptized Christian, I am shamed by the license, so unlawful to soul and intellect, you have taken in expressing those ideas and that goal to which all aspects of our truest faith aspires. So then—that Michelangelo of stupendous fame, that Michelangelo notable for his prudence, that Michelangelo whose demeanor all admire has chosen to display to the people a religious impiety only matched by the perfection of its painting. Is it possible that you, who since you are divine do not deign to consort with men, have done Lipa 10

this in the most majestic temple of God? Above the chief altar of Jesus? In the greatest chapel of the world where grand cardinals of the church, reverend priests, and the Vicar of Christ himself confess, contemplate and adore His Body, His blood and His Flesh with catholic ceremonies, sacred orders and holy prayers? If it were not invidious to introduce the comparison, I would boast of virtue in writing my [pornographic dialogue] Nanna and set my wisdom against your indiscretion, for, though dealing with a lascivious and impure subject, I speak with irreproachable chastity, employing only decent and suitable language. But you treating such an elevated matter show the angels and saints—these without the slightest modesty shown on earth, those stripped of all celestial ornament. Just see how the pagans made their images: I won’t speak of Diana who is always clothed, but when they made even a naked Venus, they caused her to cover with her hand the parts that should not be shown. And yet it is a Christian, who because he rates art higher than faith, holds it as right royal a spectacle to observe no decency among martyrs and virgins as to show someone being seized by his genitals: a brothel would avert its eyes in order not to see such things. What you have done would better suit a voluptuous bath-house than the supreme chapel! It would be less heinous if you had no belief, rather than being a believer yourself, to sap belief in others.24

According to Hughes, writing this letter was Aretino’s thinly-veiled attempt to get revenge for

Michelangelo’s past refusal to give him a drawing.25 In addition, the accusation of indecency must have been almost laughable coming from someone who made his career in part by writing pornography.26 Still, it is hard to imagine Michelangelo not taking at least some of these acute attacks very personally. Particularly stinging must have been Aretino’s assertion that he valued art more than religion. In making this attack, Aretino is clearly trying to drive a wedge between

Michelangelo’s Christian piety and artistic talent. One who “rates art higher than faith,” Aretino argues, makes the art more about itself than about the heavenly reality it depicts. Such an artist makes an idol of his work, for instead of an anagogic means to a contemplative end his art becomes an end in itself. For Michelangelo, however, there was never any contradiction between art and faith—the former was merely a manifestation of the latter. Nevertheless, the necessity of justifying his entire artistic career on the basis of this subtle distinction must have given him pause for thought, or at the very least an opportunity to further purify his motives. Lipa 11

Although it attracted less attention, criticism of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment was far from limited to the indecency question. In 1564, Dominican, theologian, and art theorist Gilio da

Fabriano published Errors of Painters, a book which would become for the artist what the Index of Prohibited Books was for the writer. Fabriano specifically targets unorthodox elements of the

Last Judgment: the angels without wings, the saints without halos, and the lack of bodily distinction between saved and damned. In addition, he criticizes the incorporation of the pagan figure Charon, the judging Christ standing on a cloud instead of seated on a throne, and the trumpeting angels drawn all together instead of separated into the four corners of the earth.27

Increasingly influential in the ongoing Catholic Counter-Reformation, Fabriano contributed to the thought that religious artwork, like religious books, should be held to a certain level of doctrinal integrity. As Murray notes, for Fabriano “such divergences were departures from orthodoxy itself—in other words, they were heresies.”28

Fabriano was not alone. A year before his book went into print the final session of the

Council of Trent had concluded, initiating a tightening of church discipline that extended even to sacred art. Countering the iconoclasm of the protestant reformers, the Council reaffirmed the role of images in the life of the Church and their importance as visual aids to contemplation.

Nevertheless, the Council decreed just as strongly against the public display of “unusual” art:

Moreover, in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics, and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed, all filthy lucre be abolished; finally, all lasciviousness be avoided; in such wise that figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting to lust. . . . In fine, let so great care and diligence be used herein by bishops, as that there be nothing seen that is disorderly, or that is unbecomingly or confusedly arranged, nothing that is profane, nothing indecorous, seeing that holiness becometh the house of God.

And that these things may be the more faithfully observed, the holy Synod ordains, that no one be allowed to place, or cause to be placed, any unusual Lipa 12

image, in any place, or church, howsoever exempted, except that image have been approved of by the bishop.29

Of all sacred spaces, the Council’s decree most certainly applied to the pope’s private chapel, and following Michelangelo’s death in 1564 it was arranged to have the most objectionable parts of the fresco painted over.30 Ironically, this task fell to Michelangelo’s close friend Daniele da

Volterra.31 Painting a secco over the fresco, da Volterra eventually earned the title “breeches- maker” for his addition of loin-cloths to several previously-nude figures.32 These alterations remain a permanent feature of the Sistine Chapel altar wall to this day.

In retrospect, the Last Judgment survived relatively unscathed compared to what could have happened. Many of the sixteenth-century pontiffs despised the work and desired that it be demolished. Despite commissioning the work, even Pope Paul III’s support was lukewarm, and on one occasion he even appeared to side with the opposition.33 Two popes later came Marcellus

II, elected in 1555, whose death after only twenty-two days arguably kept the fresco from being destroyed.34 Marcelllus’ successor, Paul IV, had already made his opinion well-known as a

Cardinal, and upon election he sent word that Michelangelo should “amend the fresco.” The artist allegedly replied, “Tell the pope that this is a small matter and can easily be amended; let him amend the world and pictures will soon amend themselves.”35 Owing to his role as chief architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica, nothing ultimately happened until after Michelangelo’s death when da Volterra’s interventions were made under Pius IV. His successor, Pope Saint Pius V, also disliked the work and commissioned two additional “breeches-makers,” but apparently was dissuaded—Murray thinks by Vasari—from making further modifications.36 The fresco once again became endangered in 1572 upon the election of Gregory XIII, who almost commissioned

Spaniard El Greco to paint his own work in place of the “obscenities and low-class figures” of

Michelangelo.37 Elected in 1585, Sixtus V hired yet another “breeches-maker,” and Murray Lipa 13 recounts how around the turn of the century Clement VIII would have destroyed it had not the president of the Accademia di Saint Luca “besought him in tears and on his knees not to commit a crime against humanity.” In this way, “the painting survived; it was merely decided to allow it to perish by neglect and casual damage.”38

Given the artist’s background, one has to wonder exactly why Michelangelo’s Last

Judgment was in particular subject to so much controversy. Indeed, nudity, pagan elements, and artistic innovations all abound on the ceiling of the same Sistine Chapel Michelangelo painted near the beginning of his career. Bernadine Barnes raises this very question in her short essay

“Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment” and concludes that the answer is publicity.39 Never before, Barnes argues, had a work received so much attention, inspired so many copies, and thus elicited so strong of opinions. While this theory is no doubt true, it does seem, nonetheless, incomplete. The sixteenth-century public reaction to

Michelangelo’s Last Judgment was so intense because this unprecedented attention took place within the context of a shattered post-Reformation Europe searching for its soul. Combating

Protestantism without and heresy within, the Council of Trent sought to reaffirm Christianity’s timeless doctrine and purify its expression in the arts. Even as the Catholic Church enjoyed a glorious renewal born of this increased discipline, Europe as a whole was marking the end of an era. The was over, and for the dying Michelangelo Buonarroti, the vociferous response to his Last Judgment was simply a manifestation of this terrifying reality.

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Notes

1. Andrè Chastel, A Chronicle of Italian Renaissance Painting, trans. Linda Murray and Peter Murray (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 205.

2. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists. Volume I, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin, 1987), 378.

3. Ascanio Condivi, The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, 2nd ed. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1999), 75.

4. Condivi, Life, 75.

5. Condivi, Life, 77.

6. Anthony Hughes, Michelangelo (London: Phaidon, 1997), 243-244.

7. Hughes, Michelangelo, 247.

8. Hughes, Michelangelo, 247.

9. Francis Connell and David Sharrock, Baltimore Catechism and Mass No. 3, Revised ed. 1949. (Front Royal, VA: Seton Press, 2007), 105.

10. Linda Murray, Michelangelo, His Life, Work, and Times (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984) 163.

11. Murray, Michelangelo, 163.

12. Condivi, Life, 83.

13. Vasari, Lives, 382-383.

14. Condivi, Life, 86.

15. Ibid., 87. One senses some thinly-veiled exaggerations in the descriptions of both Vasari and Condivi. This is not only unsurprising, but is to be expected, in biographies written during the lifetime of Michelangelo and probably under his close scrutiny. A similar example of bias, though in the extreme opposite direction, can be found in the opening exchange of Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogue on Painting in which Pietro Aretino remarks that in contrast to Raphael’s figures, “the man who sees a single figure of Michelangelo’s sees them all.” Although a general statement in a fictitious dialogue, this critique is nevertheless impossible to reconcile with Condivi’s praise of Michelangelo’s variety of figures in the Last Judgment and furthermore demonstrates the difficulty in obtaining truly objective perspectives, especially regarding such a controversial work.

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16. Vasari, Lives, 379.

17. Hughes, Michelangelo, 251-252.

18. Chastel, Chronicle, 188-189. As Chastel notes, the so-called “Theatine fathers” referenced by Sernini included the reform-minded Cardinal Giampiero Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV.

19. Chastel, Chronicle, 188.

20. Vasari, Lives, 382.

21. Chastel, Chronicle, 190.

22. Many art historians have noted the surprising correspondence between the bearded face of Saint Bartholomew in the Last Judgment and that of Pietro Aretino, one of the fresco’s biggest critics. The fact that Michelangelo incorporated his own face into the skin carried by the saint would suggest that he already saw himself as a victim of baseless attacks. It is as if Michelangelo anticipated Aretino’s scathing letter of 1545.

23. Bernadine Barnes, “Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement,” in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, ed. Elizabeth C. Childs (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 61.

24. Hughes, Michelangelo, 250-251.

25. Hughes, Michelangelo, 250-251.

26. Barnes, “Aretino,” 61.

27. Murray, Michelangelo, 165.

28. Murray, Michelangelo, 165.

29. “Council of Trent: The Twenty-Fifth Session,” The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, ed. and trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 235-236.

30. Murray, Michelangelo, 166.

31. Murray, Michelangelo, 166.

32. Chastel, Chronicle, 206-207.

33. Murray, Michelangelo, 166.

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34. Murray, Michelangelo, 166.

35. Murray, Michelangelo, 166.

36. Murray, Michelangelo, 167.

37. Murray, Michelangelo, 167.

38. Murray, Michelangelo, 167.

39. Barnes, “Aretino,” 61. Lipa 17

Bibliography

Barnes, Bernadine. “Aretino, the Public, and the Censorship of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement,” in Suspended License: Censorship and the Visual Arts, ed. Elizabeth C. Childs, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Chastel, Andrè. A Chronicle of Italian Renaissance Painting, trans. Linda Murray and Peter Murray, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Condivi, Ascanio. The Life of Michelangelo, trans. Alice Sedgwick Wohl, 2nd ed. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1999.

Connell, Francis and David Sharrock. Baltimore Catechism and Mass No. 3, Revised ed. 1949. Front Royal, VA: Seton Press, 2007.

“Council of Trent: The Twenty-Fifth Session,” The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, ed. and trans. J. Waterworth, London: Dolman, 1848.

Hughes, Anthony. Michelangelo. London: Phaidon, 1997.

Murray, Linda. Michelangelo, His Life, Work, and Times. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

Roskill, Mark W. Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Artists. Volume I, trans. George Bull, New York: Penguin, 1987.

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Figure 1. Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1536-1541. Fresco; 13.7 x 12.2 m, 45 x 40 ft. Sistine Chapel, Vatican.

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Figure 2. Michelangelo, Virgin, Christ, and Saints, detail from the Last Judgment.

Figure 3. Michelangelo, Descent of the Damned, detail from the Last Judgment.