The Last Judgment by Michelangelo

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.”

 Michelangelo 

The Last Judgment is a fresco by Michelangelo on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It took four years to be completed and was executed from 1537 to 1541. Michelangelo began working on it three decades after having finished the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

This powerful work centers on Christ the Judge, who compels the damned to hell with his left hand and lifts up the saved to heaven with his right. Surrounding Christ are the planets, the sun and saints.

Notable among the details is Minos, the Judge of Souls, shown in hell with the ears of a jackass. He is a portrait of the papal Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, who frequently complained to the Pope about the nudity of the painted figures, saying:

"It was a most dishonest act in such a respectable place to have painted so many naked figures immodestly revealing their shameful parts, that it was not a work for a papal chapel but for a bathhouse or house of ill-fame."

When Biagio complained to the pope about his consignment to hell in Michelangelo's painting, Paul III is said to have replied that he has no jurisdiction in hell.

Michelangelo's self-portrait appears twice in The Last Judgment: in the flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew and in the figure in the lower left corner, who is watching the dead rise from their graves.

The Last Judgment offers a concrete example of  controversy,  praised for its display of artistic genius and execution and attacked for its scandalous content.