13 August 2025
The intensity of Michelangelo's The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel was unlike anything I've ever experienced. The same can be said for the ceiling, but I'm just going to focus on that fresco for now. The sheer humanity of it. A writhing procession of flesh. Flesh is the first word that came to mind when I walked into the room—the way the flesh is handled as the eye descends from the saved in heaven to the damned in hell is a masterfully subtle gradation as the eye travels, but a stark contrast when the piece is taken in as a whole; the bodies in heaven are luminous and lightened, while the devils and hell-bound figures have greyed, darkened, filthy-looking flesh. It's a logical, perhaps inevitable, yet still ineffable effect.
I was also struck by how the gears of the piece rotate through figures and forms acting as links between realms—there are many, but what comes to mind first is the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew that sags toward the figure becoming aware of his own damnation, who is being dragged into hell by a devil plunging through the air by the weight of the black shadow wrapping his back. This sequencing is an example of how the painting's connective tissue hides in plain sight. It's uncanny in how its spaciousness is jam-packed; sky and clouds suspend its 300+ figures to create an atmosphere that flattens the whole scene into a cohesive tidal wave while still stretching negative space into an all-encompassing container.
But back to the humanity. I recognize that I'm arriving at this outlook from a privileged perspective given how little organized religion has impeded my personal freedoms, but to me the depicted dichotomy between the two afterlives immediately felt first and foremost like a representation of the full possible spectrum of human emotion and sensory experience. From the mystical wonder of spiritually fulfilled souls to the tormented anguish of those doomed by never having served a purpose beyond themselves, I found it to be remarkably rooted in this physical world. Pope John Paul II called the work a “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” which rings true—the mashed mass of bodies left a brain-like imprint on my memory, almost like each limb was a gyrus coalescing into as complete a picture of consciousness as I've ever encountered.