Last Judgement

The Second Coming of Christ, when, according to Christian doctrine, there will be a general resurrection of the dead who, with the living, will be finally judged and consigned to heaven or hell. Scriptural references are numerous but the principal authority is Christ's discourse to the disciples, related by Matthew (25:31–46). 'When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit in state on his throne, with all the nations gathered before him. He will separate men into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats no his left'. They would be judged according to the works of charity they had performed in their lifetime. The unrighteous would 'go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous will enter eternal life'. The millennium, or reign of Christ upon earth, was confidently expected to begin in the year 1000, and when it failed to materialize the Church's teaching came to lay increasing stress on the doctrine of the 'Four Last Things', death, judgment, heaven and hell. From this time representations of the Last Judgment began to appear, notably, in the 12th and 13th cents., on the sculptured west fronts of French cathedrals. It is a large subject composed of several parts. The central figure is Christ, the judge. On either side of him are the apostles to whom he said at the Last Supper, 'You shall... sit on thrones as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel' (Luke 2230).: Below, the dead are emerging from their tombs or from the earth or the: sea 'Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will wake, some to everlasting life and some to the reproach of eternal abhorrence' (Dan. 12:2). 'The sea gave up its dead, and Death and Hades gave up the dead in their keeping; they were judged, each man on the record of his deeds' (Rev. 20:13). The archangel Michael holds the scales in which he is weighing the souls. The righteous, on the right hand of Christ, are conducted towards paradise by angels, while on his lower left the sinners are driven into hell where they are seen suffering dreadful tortures.

1. Christ the judge, and the tribunal of apostles and saints. In Romanesque and Gothic art Christ is seated on a throne or on an arc (a rainbow), his hands raised, palms outwards, displaying his wounds. (In order to be saved it no longer sufficed to have performed the works of charity in one's lifetime, one must accept the Christian faith here manifested in the visible symbols of the Passion.) This type persisted, with variations, into the Renaissance. On the right and left of the face of Christ may be a LILY and a SWORD, symbolizing respectively the innocent and guilty. In some 15th cent. Italian works Christ hurls arrows at the damned. The famous standing Christ in Michelangelo's Last Judgment (Vatican, Sistine chapel, painted 1534–41), whose right arm is raised high in a threatening gesture, like Jupiter about to cast a thunderbolt, bears a marked resemblance to a similar figure painted about two centuries earlier in the Camposanto at Pisa by Francesco Traini, with which Michelangelo would have been familiar. The latter however depicts in reality the same traditional displaying of wounds, though in an unfamiliar posture, the left arm passing across the body to uncover the wound in the right side. Some think that Michelangelo may have misunderstood the earlier image, even though God as 'almighty Jupiter' was a concept not unfamiliar to his age (Dante, Purg. 6:118). In early Renaissance painting the apostles and saints are ranged in formal rows on either side of Christ, as in medieval sculpture, but later they are freely grouped round him. They may include the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, (the twenty-four elders of the Apocalypse), and medieval saints such as Francis and Dominic. Among the apostles Peter is usually nearest to Christ, on his right. The Virgin generally kneels on the right of Christ, interceding for those about to be judged. (In a few 14th cent. examples she appears in the role of judge herself, sitting with equal status beside Christ.) Kneeling opposite her is John the Baptist. He is occasionally replaced by the apostle John in French Gothic sculpture. The Virgin may, rarely, stand with her cloak spread out, protecting the figures beneath.
   
   
2. The resurrection of the dead. The dead emerge from their tombs or out of cracks and fissures in the earth; also occasionally from the sea. They are sometimes seen to be undergoing a change, having the form of skeletons at the point at which they emerge, and by degrees, as they leave the ground, being reclothed in flesh. St Augustine expressed the opinion that at the general resurrection all would prove to be the same age as Christ at his resurrection - then taken to be 30 years - regardless of their age when they died. They are usually portrayed accordingly. (City of God. 22:15)
   
   
3. St Michael and-the weighing of souls. St Michael, the archangel, winged and clad in armor, holds a balance. In each scale-pan is a small naked figure, a human soul. The righteous soul is generally the heavier one, and may be kneeling in prayer. A demon may be trying to tip the scales, a popular motif in Netherlandish painting. The weighing of souls, or psychostasis, was in classical mythology one of the functions of Mercury who in this and some other respects was the pagan prototype of St Michael. Alternatively, the archangel may be depicted with drawn sword barring the way of the damned who are trying to flee from punishment.
   
   
4. The role of angels in the Last Judgment. Speaking to the disciples about the Son of Man's Second Coming, Christ said, 'With a trumpet blast he will send out his angels, and they will gather his chosen from the four winds' (Matt. 24:31). Angels blowing on trumpets to raise the dead are therefore rarely absent from the Last Judgment. They are also seen conducting the righteous to paradise, and perhaps crowning and robing them; or with drawn swords they drive the damned towards hell. They sometimes hold the instruments of the Passion.
   
   
5. Heaven. Gothic sculpture used a convenient shorthand to represent heaven: the seated figure of Abraham holding the souls of the righteous in a napkin looped between his hands. The image is derived from the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:23) in which the rich man in hell looks up and sees afar off Abraham and the poor man 'in sinu ejus'. Sinus, a curve, was also the hanging fold at the neck of a toga, which was used as a pocket. The word also meant a lap. (The King James' Bible, by using here the word 'bosom'- now obsolete in this sense - gave rise to the expression 'in Abraham's bosom', meaning 'in heaven'.) Early Renaissance painting represents heaven by a Gothic church or an archway, perhaps with Peter at the gate welcoming newcomers. A common version, favored particularly by painters of northern Europe, depicts a garden. Or the righteous may be seen wandering among banks of clouds in the company of angels, or greeting one another.
   
   
6. Hell. The medieval image of the gaping jaws of hell, found also in some Renaissance painting, is derived from the sea-monster ('Leviathan' in the A.V.) in the book of Job (chap. 41) whose 'breath sets burning coals ablaze, and flames flash from his mouth'. Or the place is a more generalized cavern, normally found in the lower right of the picture (on the left of Christ), into which the damned are dragged by the hair, or driven by demons with forks. Or they are carried down on the backs of winged demons. Michelangelo introduced a motif from the Inferno (3:82 ff), which recurs frequently in later periods - that of Charon in his boat ferrying the dead into hell. The tortures of the damned are appropriate to the nature of their sin; thus it is the gluttonous who wallow in a mire, and the lecherous who burn eternally in a sulphurous pit. Satan, with three faces, has a half-swallowed sinner dangling from each jaw; the one in the center represents Judas.