Michelangelo's Last Judgment: The Renaissance Response (California Studies in the History of Art Discovery Series, Band 5) - Hardcover

Barnes, Bernadine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520205499 ISBN 13: 9780520205499

Verlag: De Gruyter, 1998

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

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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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: De Gruyter
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520205499
• ISBN 13: 9780520205499
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Herausgeber: Barnes Bernadine
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: De Gruyter Saur; orders-books@degruyter.com; ; Genthiner Str. 13; Berlin; 10785; Deutschland