The Last Judgment
The Commission
The idea of commissioning an enormous fresco, the largest ever painted in that century, depicting the Last Judgment, was probably suggested to Clement VII by the traumatic events that were undermining the unity of Christians at the time. After the pope's death, on September 25, 1534, and only two days after Michelangelo's arrival in Rome, his successor, Paul III Farnese confirmed the commission to Michelangelo, and in April 1535 scaffolding was put up in front of the altar wall.

All that had happened in the church in the years that preceded the Judgment, including the Reformation and the Sack of Rome, had a direct influence on the work's conception: painted on the altar wall, the Last Judgment was to represent humanity face to face with salvation.

The Scandal
Even before its official unveiling, the Judgment became the target of violent criticisms of a moral character. Vasari relates that Biagio da Cesena, the Vatican's master of Ceremonies, said that "it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully, and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns."

Michelangelo was not slow to take his revenge: the poor Biagio was portrayed in hell, in the figure of Minos, "shown with a great serpent curled around his legs, among a heap of devils."

Others accused the painter of heresy. These included Pietro Aretino, who, in a famous letter, even called for the fresco's destruction, the Dominican preacher Ambrogio Politi called Caterino, and Giovanni Andrea Gilio, who drew up a long statement of charges against Michelangelo in his Dialoghi.

But the nudity of the figures worried neither Paul III nor his successor Julius III. It was not until January 1564, and therefore about a month before Michelangelo's death, that the assembly of the Council of Trent took the decision to "amend" the fresco.

Summary
The Last Judgment, which Michelangelo finished in 1541 was the  largest fresco of the Renaissance, it depicts Judgment Day. Christ, with a clap of thunder, puts into motion the inevitable separation, with the saved ascending on the left side of the painting and the damned descending on the right into a Dantesque hell. As was his custom, Michelangelo portrayed all the figures nude, but prudish draperies were added by another artist (who was dubbed the "breeches-maker") a decade later, as the cultural climate became more conservative. Michelangelo painted his own image in the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Although he was also given another painting commission, the decoration of the Pauline Chapel in the 1540s, his main energies were directed toward architecture during this phase of his life.
 

Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna
In 1538, three years before finishing the Last Judgment, Michelangelo had met Vittoria Colonna, a poetess and highly cultivated woman who was one of the most influential figures in the Viterbo Circle. The members of the Circle called for certain reforms to be made in the church, in the conviction that it was Divine Grace that should play the major role in Christian life, rather than the works of man. 

Between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna (he aged sixty-one, she forty-six) a deep friendship developed, one might almost say an absolutely pure love, inspired by poetry and faith, out of which were to emerge some of Michelangelo's finest lyric poems, overflowing with admiration and devotion. The most intense period of their relationship, described in the Dialogues of Francisco de Hollanda, lasted from 1544 until Colonna's death in 1547: years filled with long conversations on how faith should be understood and lived, with passionate exchanges of letters, and with frequent visits to the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale to listen to commentaries on the sacred texts. Art, too, cemented their communion: Michelangelo gave her three drawings (a Crucifixion sent to her in 1536, a Deposition of Christ, and a Mary Magdalen) and together they planned the construction of a monastery on the slopes of the Quirinal.

Poems for Vittoria Colonna
The sonnets and madrigals that Michelangelo wrote for Vittoria Colonna between 1538 and 1547 are characterized by a tranquil Platonism, that is by the attainment of bliss through admiration of a superior woman.

Along with lyric poems of a spiritual and mystical character, Michelangelo composed other poems that were more passionate and more in keeping with the style of the time, inspired by a "cruel and beautiful" woman, seen in these verses as the object of an unattainable desire.

Michelangelo's  Solitude
Michelangelo's "unsociableness" has been seen as the typical attitude of what was known in the Renaissance as the vir melanchonicus, or the absorbed and solitary contemplator, wholly wrapped up in his art, for whom involvement in creative activity was transformed into suffering: "I am here in great distress and with great physical strain, and have no friends of any kind, nor do I want them; and I do not have enough time to eat as much as I need; my joy and my sorrow/my repose are these discomforts."

Michelangelo was perhaps one of the artists who paid the greatest price in terms of suffering for the divine gift of his art: "I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible" (January 29th, 1542).
 

Michelangelo, The Architect
The Campidoglio
In 1538-39 plans were under way for the remodeling of the buildings surrounding the Campidoglio (Capitol) on the Capitoline Hill, the civic and political heart of the city of Rome. Although Michelangelo's program was not carried out until the late 1550s and not finished until the 17th century, he designed the Campidoglio around an oval shape, with the famous antique bronze equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the center. For the Palazzo dei Conservatori he brought a new unity to the public building faēade, at the same time that he preserved traditional Roman monumentality.

Michelangelo was now in his seventies. However he accepted this mighty responsibility, maybe the heaviest he ever had to carry upon his shoulders. The Pope's persistent demands were perhaps not the main reason why he accepted the burden: first of all, he considered it as a duty and a mission entrusted to him by God. He had served popes all his life, and he wished to dedicate his last years to serving God. Thus, he wrote to his nephew Lionardo:

"Many believe, -- and I believe -- that I have been designated for this work by God. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of love for God and I put all my hope in Him."

Michelangelo would not accept any payment for this sacred task. He soon had to face his numerous enemies: the "Sangallo clan," construction suppliers and contractors whose fraudulent practices Sangallo had always connived at. So, Michelangelo freed Saint Peter's from thieves and bandits. Since his very first visit to the site, he criticized the model designed by Sangallo, declaring that it had been blinded, devoid of light, that there were too many columns piled up on one on top of each other-- and that with so many projections, pinnacle turrets and various fragments of all kinds, it looked more like a German edifice than a monument inspired by the Antiquity or even by a beautiful modern school. Furthermore, asserted the Master, it was possible to spare fifty years of construction time and save over three hundred thousand ducats of expense.

"I spend my days supervising the construction of St. Peter's. The Vatican's financial superintendent keeps harassing me for a progress report. My response: your lordship, I am not obliged to, nor do I intend to, tell you anything. Your job is to keep the money rolling in, and out of the hands of thieves. I will see to the building."

The architect Piero Ligorio had just entered Paul IV's service. He began to torment Michelangelo again, repeating everywhere that he was growing senile. His intrigues made the sculptor furious. He wished to return to Florence, and was about to do so, but Giorgio Vasari wrote him again and encouraged him to pursue the building of Saint-Peter's. Of course, Michelangelo felt the burden of old age; he often repeated that he had reached his last hour and that no thought was born in him where death did not figure. Thus, in one of his letters, he wrote:

"So, Vasari, God wants me to encumber him for a few more years. I know you will tell me I am a crazy old man to write sonnets -- but since many people say that I have become gaga, I have to live up to my reputation. I can feel through your letter the affection you feel for me. Yes, I would like to move my old bones next to those of my father, as you beseech me to do. But if I left Rome, I would feel guilty of dooming Saint Peter's to failure, and that would be a great shame and a deadly sin. When enough of the construction is done and nothing can be changed to it any more, I hope to follow your advice -- when it is no longer important to frustrate the appetites of those who hope that I will leave soon."

They were also the years of his last sculptures, including the Florentine Pietą, carved for his own tomb. Dissatisfied with his work, Michelangelo attacked the sculpture with a hammer, breaking off a leg and an arm from the figure of Christ and one of the Virgin Mary's hands. Another sculpture the so-called Rondanini Pietą, consisting solely of the figures of the Madonna and Christ, may have been begun by Michelangelo before 1550 but had remained unfinished. 

Now his friends - we are told by Vasari - had asked him to start work on it again "so that he could continue using his chisel everyday." Still perfectly lucid, the almost ninety-year-old Michelangelo created one of his most spiritual images, in which the Mother and Christ almost interpenetrate in an indissoluble union, beyond passion and physical death.

The Rondanini Pieta
Mentioned by Vasari in his first edition in 1550, it was therefore begun before that date. According to Blaise de Vigenre, a French traveler, who saw Michelangelo work on this statue that very year, the sculptor (who was in his seventies and not very robust) chipped off more splinters from a very hard lump of marble, than three young stone-cutters in triple the time. He attacked the stone with such fiery energy that one expected to see the block shattered to pieces. With one blow he sent chips three to four fingers thick flying into the air, and penetrated to a point indicated by a drilling with such precision that he might have destroyed the whole stone, had he cut slightly deeper into it.

Thanks to Condivi, we know for sure that he was still working on this group in 1553. In his second edition, Vasari reports: "At this time (1556), Michelangelo was working at it almost every day: it was like a hobby for him. He ended up breaking the block, probably because the latter was full of impurities and so hard that sparks flew from under his chisel; perhaps also because his self-criticism was so ruthless that he was never satisfied with what he had done. Indeed, to tell the truth, he rarely completed the works of his old age when he had reached the peak of maturity in his creative power. The only completely finished sculptures date back to the early period of his career."

Here are Michelangelo's last words concerning his final masterpiece: "the course of my life has finally reached In its fragile boat, over stormy seas The common port where we must account For all our past actions. No painting or sculpture can quiet my soul, Now turned to the Divine Love that opens To embrace me in His arms." "For ten years of sleepless nights, I've been designing a Pieta. The body of our Lord was too heavy with death to be held up by his old Mother. His head...too earthy with matter, too real...so I cut away the Lord's head and shoulders, leaving only his arm as a model for a new one, and carved a new head from the Virgin's shoulder. He backs inward to fuse with his Mother's body, as she bends forward to raise him up. Mother and Son, the Living and the Dead, become One - Death becomes a Resurrection."

Michelangelo who could no longer sleep, got up at night to work with his chisel. As he used to do in the past, he had made himself a cardboard helmet upon which he fixed a candle to light up his work and keep his hands free. As he grew old, he wished more and more to be alone. He needed solitude, and when Rome was fast asleep, he sought refuge in nightly labor. Silence was a blessing to him and night was his friend.

"I live alone and miserable, trapped as marrow under the bark of the tree. My voice is like a wasp caught in a bag of skin and bones. My teeth shake and rattle like the keys of a musical instrument. My face is a scarecrow. My ears never cease to buzz. In one of them, a spider weaves its web, in the other one, a cricket sings all night long. My rattling catarrh won't let me sleep. This is the state where art has led me, after granting me glory. Poor, old, beaten, I will be reduced to nothing, if death does not come swiftly to my rescue. Pains have quartered me, torn me, broken me and death is the only inn awaiting me."

Artwork by Michelangelo