Eureka! My Last Judgement on Michelangelo’s
Eureka!
For years I have struggled with the meaning of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. The essay “Michelangelo’s Art Through Michelangelo’s Eyes” explains my overall understanding of the Sistine ceiling and the altar wall on which the Last Judgment is painted. It was published online in 2006. In it I argue that Christ is resurrecting in the center of Dante’s mind because the large central portion of the mural forms a giant (but mostly unseen) profile of Dante. It is perfectly understandable. Michelangelo was considered one of the foremost Dante scholars of his generation and he felt at one with the earlier poet as other scholars have long noted. But why, oh why, is Dante given pride-of-place in such a masterpiece? If every painter paints himself, where is Michelangelo? Yes, an artist can use an alter ego – like Dante - and there are at least three actual quite small self-portraits of Michelangelo in the mural but nothing major. This, is, after all, a scene in Michelangelo’s mind. You would expect some self-portraits. But why is the resurrection of Christ in Dante's brain the poetic center of the painting? Where is the focus on Michelangelo?
And then, yesterday, it dawned…. I was reading Omar Calabrese's intriguing volume on Artists' Self-Portraits (2006) where he notes that it is not normal for the hand of Christ in Michelangelo's masterpiece to be facing outwards. He says we see it the same way an artist would see his own hand and that because Michelangelo painted a hand that way four times in the Sistine Chapel, including God's, Christ's hand must be Michelangelo's. He claims that the lines on it even match Michelangelo's Saturnine character based on a psuedo-Aristotelian treatise on palmistry.1 Even if he's wrong on the last point, he's right. Here's why.
Christ in the center has long been recognized as a resurrecting Christ, almost as if stepping out of a tomb (above left).2But what if we look at Christ and think of something else. Why might he not be getting up from a seated position to "paint" the wall with his palm flat against the surface of the mural, his other arm poised to choose “paint” from a “palette.” Like the Creation panel (right), in which God assumes Michelangelo's own position sitting on a stool with his arms stretched above him to "paint" the ceiling, so Christ does something similar in the Last Judgment, this time on the vertical wall. The Christ spiritually reborn in Dante’s mind, the Christ who is the narrative and focal point of the entire wall, is Michelangelo himself....painting what we see.
1. Calabrese, Artists' Self-portraits (New York: Abbeville Press) 2006, p. 364
2. The Pope, in the original contract for the mural, commissioned a Resurrection scene, not a Last Judgment.
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