Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (The Discovery) (The Discovery Series): 5 - Hardcover

Barnes, Bernadine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520205499 ISBN 13: 9780520205499

Publisher: University of California Press, 1998

Synopsis

In her analysis of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment", Bernadine Barnes provides an original and stimulating view of this renowned fresco and of the audience for which it was created. Because Michelangelo is so often regarded as a nearly superhuman artistic genius, we tend to forget that his works were not created to illustrate his life. "The Last Judgment" did have great personal meaning for him, but his representation of this religious event was not purely self-directed, says Barnes. She argues that Michelangelo had a particular type of viewer in mind as he designed his work. "The Last Judgment" dealt with an especially evocative subject, and Michelangelo engaged viewers by creating highly imaginative scenes tempering fear with hope and by referring to contemporary events. The painting's original, elite audience - the papal court and a handful of distinguished lay persons - was sophisticated about art and poetry, almost exclusively male, and orthodox in its religious beliefs. That audience later broadened and included artists allowed into the Chapel to copy Michelangelo's work. These artists helped to create another, less sophisticated audience, one that knew the fresco only through reproductions and written descriptions. The response of this latter audience eventually prompted the church to censor the painting. Beautifully illustrated with photographs of the recently restored Sistine Chapel, Barnes' study greatly enhances our understanding of changing Renaissance attitudes toward art. Her book also provides valuable insights into one of Michelangelo's greatest works.

About this title

About the Author

Bernadine Barnes is Associate Professor of Art History, Wake Forest University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response

By Bernadine Barnes

University of California Press

Copyright © 1998 Bernadine Barnes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520205499


Introduction

Michelangelo is an artist who looms larger than life. His refractory personality, his fits of temper and brooding, and, above all, the power of his work have contributed to his legend and to our idea of what the artistic genius should be. Our gaze is drawn to the man, and it is all too easy to forget that his works were not created to illustrate his life. If any idea dominates sixteenth-century discussions of art, however, it is that art should communicate with its audience. A work of art might teach or delight, glorify or ridicule, but it always has an effect on someone. Our modern notions of art-for-art's-sake and of personal expression were only beginning to take shape in the sixteenth century. With regard to Michelangelo's Last Judgment (Plate 1, Fig. 1), there is no reason to suppose that such notions outweighed those related to communication and decorum in the artist's mind.

Yet in the many interpretations that have been proposed for the painting, the audience has figured very little indeed. Scholars working in the first decade of the twentieth century took on the monumental task of gathering documents and seeking written sources that could serve as a key to identifying particular figures.1 In these an occasional remark might be made to show that Michelangelo knew the literary source in question (primarily the Bible and the Divine Comedy ), but there is no consideration of those who would be looking at the fresco or of the manner in which they would read the references. Later in the century clues to meaning were sought in the wider cultural context—the zeitgeist—but even then there is little sense that the painting was meant to be understood by someone living at the time. Instead, the cultural milieu forms a background for the artist's creation, often seen as a deeply pessimistic reaction to events like the Sack of Rome.2 Recent studies of the theological ideas that may have informed the imagery have considered the sophistication of viewers in the chapel, although again they emphasize the ideas of those who guided Michelangelo's creative process.3 They give much less attention to the target audience or the actual receivers of the message in the fresco.

It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the reception of the fresco has gone unnoticed. Even the earliest art-historical studies of the painting note—and often quote—Pietro Aretino's vicious letter and Giovanni Andrea Gilio's "prudish" book. Similarly, the writings of Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari are regularly used in defense of the fresco, although more often they are seen as possible documents of Michelangelo's intention. The most complete collections of these responses have been brought together by Paola Barocchi, with some interesting supplements by Romeo de Maio. These scholars represent the two main trends in the use of this material, Barocchi's being a list without significant comment and de Maio's a polemic arguing that the Vatican was opposed to the fresco. My own intention in returning to this material is to suggest how these remarks form a connected discourse and how the conception of the public changes according to writers' motives and the audience for the criticism. Charles de Tolnay's volume on Michelangelo's late work includes a passage that suggests why the viewer has received so little scholarly attention: "Michelangelo did not address himself in his works to any particular segment of society, nor did he flatter his patrons by including them in his compositions. His art was universal in its aim."4 This need to see Michelangelo as an artist above and apart from the run of humanity is pervasive in the scholarship, and while it does serve to keep us in awe of his heroic personality, it also cuts off significant avenues of exploration.

In a remarkable series of articles from the 1970s and 1980s Leo Steinberg not only reacted to the overwhelmingly pessimistic interpretations of the fresco but also considered the response to it in a more complex and interesting way. He proposed that the fresco displayed ideas that Michelangelo would have learned about through Catholic reformers like Vittoria Colonna: that Christ would be merciful to mankind, that hell would not be permanent, that faith alone would save the believer. Steinberg emphasized the response of those critics who argued in favor of Michelangelo's work and interpreted their words as "covering" for the heretical ideas displayed in the painting. This is surely an ingenious way of dealing with critics who do not support an art historian's argument. I have chosen a more mundane strategy: I listen to the critics to hear what they are saying. When their descriptions do not fit what we now feel quite certain is there, I consider why they wrote as they did. Were they simply "filling in the gaps" with what they expected to be there anyway? And if they were, is it because they were not looking closely or because they were not looking at all? Had they been hurried out of the chapel before they could get a good look? Or were they not there at all, relying instead on hearsay or prints for their information?

In this book I assume that the Last Judgment did not simply express Michelangelo's beliefs but also served a larger audience, communicating ideas to others. Communication, however, is never a simple process, and I have found its variability most interesting. The "message" itself can contain points that might be understood in more

than one way. Variations and ambiguities in the theme of the Last Judgment were not only a result of changing artistic traditions but also an important part of the meaning of the final judgment itself. Hope and fear, glory and humiliation were held in the balance. Spectators would have a real part in this event, and various techniques are used to include them. But their fate was undetermined. No matter how optimistic the artist might be or how dreadful the circumstances at the time the work was made, the meaning of the image depends on this fundamental fact. Only the viewer could resolve the open-ended question that an image of the Last Judgment represents.

The iconographic tradition reveals many of the ways that this undetermined quality was incorporated into the image. Michelangelo drew upon the tradition, not because of some inexorable historical movement, but because the recognizable form of the Last Judgment communicated certain ideas to the spectator. He seems not to have painted the Last Judgment with the same didactic intent seen in most earlier examples, however. There are too many details that are confusing, too many transgressions of conventions that seem deliberate attempts to make a simple statement much more complex. His variations, I believe, can be explained as a means of riveting the attention of viewers, engaging them by playing on their knowledge of what should and should not be represented in the Last Judgment. My hypothesis is that Michelangelo knew how sophisticated the viewers of his painting could be (sophisticated in matters theological, literary, and artistic) and created a work with them in mind. That audience changed in time, however, and the conflicting expectations of successive audiences led to the sometimes heated criticism leveled at the fresco in the later sixteenth century.

In the beginning the audience for the Last Judgment was a fairly specific group of people: the elite clergy and laity who would have been present at ceremonies in the Sistine Chapel. In time that audience broadened to include artists who were allowed into the chapel to copy the work of the master and, later, those who saw reproductions or read descriptions of the fresco. Evidence for the change in audience is found in the written response to the fresco. Almost all the critics were either literary men or professional artists. Both groups had their own interests (not least, promoting their own careers) and worked from a set of assumptions that others may not have shared. In present-day critical terminology, we would say that they formed an interpretive community that agreed upon certain criteria in forming their judgments.5 These groups also defined "the public" for the fresco, a constructed entity against which they set their praises and condemnations of it. Moreover, the critics were not alone in constructing an idea of the public. The artist too must have imagined some group of people seeing and responding to his work. With the Last Judgment , as with any other work of art, the artist probably did not anticipate his audience absolutely correctly, but it is possible and worthwhile to speculate about this intended public and to ask how the work might have been constructed with them in mind.

As this work has evolved, I have come to see my task as something like trying to understand a conversation among foreigners. It is certainly possible to translate the words being used with a reasonable degree of accuracy—just as we can learn to understand the conventions used in traditional representations of the theme of the Last Judgment. But to understand the conversation fully, we need to be aware of more subtle qualities: a courteous or sneering tone, a play on words or a hint of irony, or a thousand other small clues to the real message being conveyed. Observing all the participants—their reactions as well as their statements—puts us in a much better position to understand the conversation than observing only one speaker. I am interested in written responses in a similar way, that is, as a due to how Renaissance viewers understood the work. I have restricted myself to criticism written in the sixteenth century for that reason. It would be possible, of course, to study the reception of the fresco up to the present day, but that would be a different study from this one. There is no denying, however, that this study itself is part of that long chain of reception and that my own late-twentieth-century point of view will be apparent to those who read it in the future. There is also no denying that much interpretation is involved in trying to understand this process of invention and reception. I am attempting to discern intentions, not only of the artist but also of his audience, to get some sense of what the Last Judgment meant to its viewers. I do not think we can ever be absolutely certain of the results, but the alternative is to abandon all hope of understanding what other people mean by what they say or what they paint.

Documents, including those surrounding the Last Judgment , are subject to interpretation as much as paintings are. Some facts emerge, but more often a range of possibilities is defined. The documents provide no simple answer to the question of when the fresco was begun, for example; instead they suggest a gradual coming into being.6 In the summer and fall of 1533 there was unspecific musing about Michelangelo's working on something in the Sistine Chapel—but neither the subject nor the medium is clear. By October 1533 Michelangelo had returned to Rome from Florence, but possibly not for the specific purpose of working on the Last Judgment —Tommaso de' Cavalieri's presence there, no doubt, was a strong motivation, as was the political situation in Florence, with Michelangelo's enemy Alessandro de' Medici in power. The pope himself did not return to Rome until a few months later. His absence would not have prevented Michelangelo from working on the Last Judgment if the project had been decided upon and if he had had the desire to do so. Those conditions may not have been met, though, for a letter from a certain Agnello, dated March 1534, says that the pope had commissioned a "resurrection," and both Condivi and Vasari report that Michelangelo was reluctant to begin work on the project, preferring instead to finish the tomb of Julius II.7 In the summer of 1534, Michelangelo returned to Florence one last time and was back in Rome on September 23, 1534. Pope Clement VII died two days later.

The transition from the Clementine papacy to that of Paul III corresponds to changes in the preparations of the wall. Scaffolding was up in front of the altar wall in March 1534 (for the "resurrection"), and payments were again made for the erection of scaffolding in April 1535. Under the advice of Sebastiano del Piombo, the wall was prepared for oil painting—a mistake that was pulled down in January 1536. Soon thereafter, and until April 1536, masons relined the entire wall with bricks.8 If in 1534 Agnello was correct in calling the subject of the painting a Resurrection, then there was also a change of subject; the first reference to the Last Judgment as the subject of the painting does not occur until September 1535. The scale of the painting may also have been rethought then. The drawings that survive for the Last Judgment (see, for example, Fig. 18) suggest that the lunettes, painted by Michelangelo himself around 1510, were to have been preserved, with the Last Judgment painted below them. Covering the entire wall with bricks put an end to that plan, and the design of the Last Judgment had to expand to fit the new dimensions of the field.

Finally, on May 18, 1536, Michelangelo was said to be painting. To see this date as the beginning of the painting, however, is to ignore all the preparation that went before. When were the drawings begun? When was the cartoon finished? In the documents only a papal brief of November 17, 1536, contains any real mention of drawings; it says that the cartoons were done under Clement VII. Although the statement seems straightforward, the brief itself was written with particular motivations that may have been served by pushing back the date.9 In any case, it is unlikely that the entire cartoon was completed before Clement died or that it remained unchanged thereafter. There is no real evidence that the design was completed until work stopped on the fresco—certainly by November 19, 1541, when the scaffolding was removed, and probably by October 31, 1541, when the painting was officially unveiled. The recent cleaning of the Sistine Chapel has revealed some important pentimenti that suggest Michelangelo made adjustments in his design even at the last moment.10

The restoration of the Last Judgment that has brought it vividly to life has also made us aware of how much has been irrevocably changed (see Plates 1–4). We can only imagine the intensity of the expansive ultramarine background, which has now deteriorated so that some areas, especially at the bottom, are nearly white.11 The loincloths added to so many figures stand out even more sharply today than in the sixteenth century, painted as they were in darker colors made to match a paint surface growing sooty after only some twenty years. But we also have the opportunity to see the power of Michelangelo's chiaroscuro, the intense contrasts that push some figures forward into our space, the increased clarity of his foreshortenings. As with the cleaning of the Sistine ceiling, the Last Judgment is now majestic rather than somber. I believe that it was always meant to be seen that way.

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520205499
• ISBN 13: 9780520205499
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192