Art › Rome › The Sistine Chapel
The Last Judgment
Il Giudizio universale
Michelangelo’s vision of the end of the world, covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel.
More than twenty years after the ceiling, Michelangelo came back, aged about sixty, to paint the wall behind the altar. Christ raises his arm in the middle, Mary beside him; the saved rise on the left and the damned fall on the right, down to Charon ferrying them across the river to hell. St Bartholomew holds up his own flayed skin, and the face on it is Michelangelo’s.
Over 300 figures, nearly all of them naked: so many objected that after Michelangelo’s death Daniele da Volterra was paid to paint loincloths over them, and was nicknamed the breeches-maker. The restoration of 1990–1994 took some of them off again. Stand before it in 3D ›
