The Last Judgement
Michelangelo
1536–1541
Fresco
Adult €25
15min
Sistine Chapel (altar wall), Vatican Museums
Viale Vaticano, Vatican City 00120
391 figures in a cosmic vortex around a powerful, beardless Christ. Painted 25 years after the ceiling — the mood is completely different: not High Renaissance optimism but Counter-Reformation anguish. Michelangelo's self-portrait: the flayed skin dangling from Saint Bartholomew's hand. A later artist (il Braghettone) painted loincloths over the nudes. Michelangelo: 'I paint souls, not flesh.'