Speaker 3
met, we mentione the last judgment to us athets. Let's face up to itsir when you tell tistners about the last judgment and the scandal it caused, and the counter scandal and and the serpent around all of that. Let's go for the last judgment. Efec,
Speaker 3
is a huge wall. So it says two side walls, a ceiling, and then this last big wall, the last judgment. Absolutely.
Speaker 2
So the last judgment is painted 25 years after the sisten chapel ceiling. So michael angelo is really coming back and coming face to face with his younger self. Olis he's about 60 when he starts work on the last judgment. And i think that the fact that he's that age, which in the renaissance was already considered old, he is actually grappling with a lot of concerns about mortality. And this, i think fede threw very powerfully into the last judgment, which has a very different character to the ceiling. The ceiling is quite orderly, it's quite structured. The lost judgment is just an entire wall full of blue and tumbling, twisting, falling bodies.
Speaker 3
It's mostly naked, mostly naked, mostly male,
Speaker 2
mostly male. Yes. And obviously it was the male figures who who were predominantly naked that the women, certainly the virgin mary, would have been clothed. And so michael angelo paints this as a way of, sort of exploring his own ambivolence about what might happen at the end of days, whenhe bodies are resurrected from the dead.
Speaker 3
Bodies are resurrected so they can turn into souls.
Speaker 2
You are bodily resurrected. So you have to transcend the physical world, and a you become almost a divine body. And that's what we see. There are figures in these incredibly complex poses and really daring foreshortening, because he is experimenting with the idea of what the body does when it transcends physical laws. And and
Speaker 3
it has been described as homoerotic artison
Speaker 2
ye, there are some groups of male figures who are embracing em in the upper part, showing heaven. And a lot of people were disturbed bythe by the nudity. Writ from the very beginning. A for example, the popes an officer, biagiodaches na, who comes in just after it's it's it's finished. Or at the very final stages, and disapproves strongly of all this new dity going on, and complains to the pope about it. And this is the mass of ceremonies, the mass of ceremonies complainsus exactly. And olrese someone quite powerful. And michael angelo responds to this in typical michael angelo fashion by then painting viagio dacesena into the fresco as minos, who is the judge of the damned in hell. And he paints him naked with a snake wrapped around his hips and covering his genitals, biting his genitals, as a response to his criticism of the nudity. So that is his reaction to the initial criticism. But the criticism continues. It goes all the way through, and immediately throughwhat wele all the way through the sixteenth century. So almost immediately after michael angelo dies, they then bring in his friend, assistant, dianet daniella de voltaira. Because the climate has changed a lot by that point. You've heard the counsel of trent, and there are new rules about art, which may or may not have been influenced directly by concerns over this nudity. And daniella de voltaira is employed to essentially paint trousers on a lot of the male figures. And he gets the nickname the breeches maker because of this, and
Speaker 2
ridiculed, yes. And later in the century, el greco, whois in rome, says to the pope, you know, this is indecorous to have this on the wall. I'll paint you something better. Knock it down. Knock
Speaker 1
him down. So the idea that this happens. It is almost knocked down. This is the last fthe wall. Nod. Teole cabod, no, no, just ta wall. You. Now, because therses, let's also talk about moving the wall, which is what it eventually leads to, the moving of the screen rather than the wall. Under paul the fourth were talking about demolishing that wal in, getting rid of thatscene painting. But it doesn't happen, thankfully. I mean, i think, if i may just add to this, that this is michelat so we talked about the plan for the chapel, and nobody had imagined the last judgment at the time.