Opera magazine
2024-08-04
The Last Judgment in Brunelleschi's Dome
History and description of one of the largest mural paintings in the history of art
The gigantic vault of Brunelleschi's dome is adorned with one of the greatest paintings in the history of art. It represents the Last Judgment and is made up of approximately 700 figures arranged on 3,600 m2 of surface!!!
Perhaps Brunelleschi already had the idea of decorating his dome with a mosaic or a painting, but it was only in 1572 that Grand Duke Cosimo I commissioned the elderly Giorgio Vasari to paint it. Vasari started the project by creating the preparatory cartoons in special large rooms of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella. So he set about painting the summit registers in fresco, 90 meters above the ground. But two years later, in 1574, both he and his client, Grand Duke Cosimo, died. The heir to the throne, Francesco I de' Medici, called to complete the work an artist from Urbino who was already among Vasari's collaborators, Federico Zuccari, who finished the painting in 1579, but completed it on dry plaster.
The immense work is structured according to a refined iconographic program, developed by the theologian, court intellectual and Benedictine monk Vincenzo Borghini. He conceived it in relation to the decorations of the marble choir below, the work of Baccio Bandinelli, also created at the request of Grand Duke Cosimo in 1547 and completed the same year that work on the painting of the dome began. By the hand of Bandinelli, on the altar stood a blessing God the father and below, a colossal dead Christ, behind him an Adam and Eve with the tree and the serpent of Universal Sin, while around the enclosure there were panels in bas-relief with figures of characters with uncertain identities, perhaps patriarchs, prophets and sibyls. When these sculptures entered into dialogue with the Last Judgment above, a great story about the History of Humanity was revealed to the eyes of the people and the clergy, from the Original Sin, to the Sacrifice of Christ, up to the end of the World.
In the painting of the dome, the powerful bodies recalled Michelangelo's Judgment in the Sistine Chapel (completed 40 years earlier) but the model for the order of the figures were the thirteenth-century mosaics of the Baptistery vault: a network of seven sails arranged in registers, plus one sail, the one placed in line above the altar, reserved for the representation of the parousia of Christ the judge. A logic that the Florentine intellectuals and artists of the sixteenth century also found in Dante's Divine Comedy, which was a further creative stimulus and an iconographic source for this work.
Let's then analyze the Judgment from top to bottom. On the top, arranged in groups of three, within a fake trabeated architecture, the twenty-four old men described in the Apocalypse can be recognised, identified with biblical patriarchs and prophets, standing around the throne of God, which here symbolically becomes the light that pours down from octagon of the summit oculus. This is followed by the seven angelic hierarchies of the Christian tradition, namely Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels, each bearing a symbol of the Passion.
Below (here Vasari's work stopped giving way to Zuccari), there are seven families of blessed, divided into: people of God, Christian rulers, Doctors of the Church, Holy martyrs, Apostles and Evangelists, pontiffs and bishops and religious orders)
In the lower range there are groups that are more difficult to read. They are in fact seven triads of personifications respectively of the Christian Virtues, of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and of the Beatitudes.
Finally, in the lower register there are seven regions of Hell reserved for the punishment of the seven deadly sins: lust, sloth, anger, envy, gluttony, greed and pride. In each a demon of zoomorphic forms torments the damned, while in the last, pride, the proud man par excellence and king of the underworld dominates: Lucifer, depicted as in Dante's Divine Comedy, with three faces and bat wings. The antichrist is placed in the west, significantly where the sun sets, and, conceptually, opposed to Christ the judge.
The east segment stands alone, is the most visible from the nave, is aligned with the main altar and is reserved to represent the theological pivot of the entire presbytery: it is the "eighth" segment, symbol of the eighth day, the time of eternity that will begin at the end of the world. In fact, Christ the Judge is represented there, returning to the clouds to judge humanity, and therefore flanked by an angel who offers him the sword with which to divide the righteous from the wicked. His figure is included in a luminous disk that recalls the passage in the Bible with Malachi's prophecy about the arrival of a sun of Justice, which was interpreted by Christians as an allusion to Christ. Furthermore, the
circular shape and the white color of this element also clearly recall the host, which is consecrated in the altar below and which, precisely in those years, the Council of Trent had reaffirmed to be the true body of the Lord. Around Christ stand Mary and the patron saints of Florence, who intercede for the Florentine Church in adoration. Below, you can see some personifications and symbols, which tell of the end of the world and of history. An angel hammers a nail into a terraqueous globe: the world that crucified the son of God is now defeated. Below there is a winged old man with a broken hourglass: it is Saturn, pagan god of time, which is now over. On the opposite side, the skeleton that breaks the scythe is death, which, defeated, abandons his instrument. In the center, we recognize the allegories of Mother Nature who, with the many breasts, now withered, with which she nourished the living creatures, finally sleeps, surrounded by the four seasons. Above, in a dominant position, a female figure represents the militant Church, finally victorious, which has discarded its armor and receives the crown.