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Comparing Michelangelo's Last Judgment And Sistine Chapel

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In comparing and contrasting the Last Judgment (1527) by Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) and the Sistine Chapel Last Judgment (1535–1541) by Michelangelo (1475-1564), the subject matter of each is the artist’s interpretation of the Last Judgment; the day which follows Armageddon when each individual’s fate will be determined by God according to the good and evil of the individual’s earthly life. Leyden who was almost twenty years younger than Michelangelo had a distinctively different interpretative style, which can be attributed to their generational differences and styles. As a personal opinion, the Protestant Reformation may have affected Leyden’s sense of religious unity, his figures appear as individuals not concerned with those surrounding them. Leyden’s figures each seem to only be concerned with their own situation, some figures appear as unaffected by what was going on around them. Leyden’s less unified humanity may be contextually attributed to the Protestant Reformation and Counter Reformation. Contrastingly, Michelangelo’s figures all seem unified as if their concern was not only for themselves but for all of mankind. Michelangelo’s rising figures generally look toward Christ in redemption and salvation. …show more content…

So much so, the church ordered drapery painted over the nudity in the Sistine Chapel which would later be restored hundreds of years later. Regarding Michelangelo’s work, Kloss (2005) remarks “that right hand raised is really that of a deity from the classical past as much as it is from the Christian world. It is an astonishing figure. The nudity, by the way, there is nudity in the Last Judgment, but there was much more. Most of these figures were unclothed. And at a later period, in the 16th century still, this ran headlong into the Counter Reformation and its reformers and their strictures”

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