the Last Judgement. This thing sparked effing riots when it was revealed to the public in 1541 for the first time. And why shouldn't it? Take a look at the piece:
It's bloody gorgeous. A huge, elaborate fresco detailing, in case we hadn't picked up on the content of it by now, Judgement Day. Souls rising to heaven, being condemned and dragged to Hell, with Christ and the Madonna central to it all. Also, note how masterful the foreshortening of every single limb is in this. His friends and critiques all marveled at how spectacular the foreshortening was.
All this praise aside, one group disliked the masterpiece; the Catholic Orthodoxy. Where, they roared, were the classical, non heretical depictions of Christ and the Last Judgement? Why was Christ so...normal looking, why was the virgin mother so timorous, and why were all the cherubs and souls so naked? Blasphemy, they cried, and the work of Michelangelo was suddenly in danger.
His friends and admirers, those knowledgable in the ways of the arts, step up to protect him. This was nothing but another classical interpretation if the source material! Citing Matthew 25:41 as a source, they claimed this was clearly a depiction of his righteous anger whilst Judgement Day whirled on around Him. And most scholars agree with them now. Except there's another school of thought on this fresco, one which I think really has some merit to it.
This is the belief that his supporters and friends and benefactors, those who knew of Michelangelo's intent behind the work, skewed the public and the churches' understanding of it to protect it. A few examples of this:
1. Many of the bodies we see being drawn up to heaven for the Rapture are, well, gross. Some of them are decomposing, some are just bones, some have body language that reads as plain miserable. And all of them, the church argued are too corporeal and human looking, when the soul was clearly something more than that. Now, I would argue that it was the personification of bodies being made solid and non corruptable that made him depict them as solid, fleshy things as opposed to transparent souls. Another interesting point here, when referring to the gross souls still waiting for their turn at redemption are being over-emphasized and picked to pieces. This is something critics do with a lot of his work, I think; they tend to focus quite a bit on the morbid, and ignore things like the soul in his fresco drawn upward by two rosaries, literally carried to Heaven by the power of prayer. The hope and tenderness is still there, but nobody takes not of it.
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