Page 244 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Rome

242  ROME AREA B Y AREA

Sistine Chapel: The Walls
The massive walls of the Key to the Frescoes: Artists and Subjects
Sistine Chapel, the main
chapel in the Vatican Palace,
were frescoed by some of
the finest artists of the 15th
and 16th centuries. The 12
paintings on the side walls,
by artists including Perugino, The Last Judgment
Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, and
Signorelli, show parallel Perugino Botticelli Ghirlandaio
episodes from the lives of Rosselli Signorelli Michelangelo
Moses and Christ. The
decoration of the chapel walls
was completed between 1534 1 Baptism of Christ in the Jordan 7 Moses’s Journey into Egypt
2 Temptations of Christ
8 Moses Receiving the Call
and 1541 by Michelangelo, 3 Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew 9 Crossing of the Red Sea
who added the great altar 4 Sermon on the Mount 10 Adoration of the Golden Calf
5 Handing Over the Keys to St. Peter
11 Punishment of the Rebels
wall fresco, The Last Judgment. 6 Last Supper 12 Last Days of Moses
The Last Judgment by erected that slanted inward to turmoil of the Reformation.
Michelangelo stop dust from settling on it. In fact, the work conveys the
Michelangelo worked alone on artist’s own tormented attitude
Revealed in 1993 after a year’s the fresco for seven years, until to his faith. It offers neither
restoration, The Last Judgment its completion in 1541. the certainties of Christian
is considered to be the master- The painting depicts the orthodoxy nor the ordered
piece of Michel angelo’s mature souls of the dead rising up to view of Classicism.
years. It was commissioned face the wrath of God, a subject In a dynamic, emotional
by Pope Paul III Farnese, and that is rarely used for an altar composition, the figures are
required the removal of earlier decoration. The pope chose it caught in a vortex of motion.
frescoes and two windows over as a warning to Catholics to The dead are torn from their
the altar. A new wall was adhere to their faith in the graves and hauled up to face
Christ the Judge, whose
athletic, muscular figure
is the focus of all the
painting’s movement.
Christ shows
little sympathy for
the agitated saints
around him, clutching
the instruments of
their martyrdom.
Neither is any pity
shown for the damned,
hurled down to the
demons in hell. Here,
Charon, pushing
people off his boat into
the depths of Hades,
and the infernal judge
Minos, are taken from
Dante’s Inferno. Minos
has ass’s ears, and is a
portrait of courtier
Biagio da Cesena, who
had objected to the
nude figures in the
fresco. Michelangelo’s
self-portrait is on the
skin held by the martyr
Souls meeting the wrath of Christ in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment St. Bartholomew.

US_242-243_EW_Rome_US.indd 242 15/03/17 3:53 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Flashmap follow-on template “UK” LAYER
(Source v1.3)
Date 18th October 2012
Size 125mm x 217mm