Between 1532 and 1534, Michelangelo divided his time between Rome
and Florence, but he had already decided to settle permanently
in Rome. In Florence, he continued work on the Medici Chapel, and
he oversaw the construction of the wooden elements of the Biblioteca
Laurenziana, which was not completed until 1559. After
his final move to Rome, Michelangelo entrusted the completion of
the Chapel project to assistants. In 1533, Michelangelo did more
work on the tomb of Julius, and in 1534 Pope Clement VII commissioned
him to paint a Resurrection scene on the altarpiece wall of the
Sistine Chapel, thereby finishing the Sistine project and finally
fulfilling the contract promised by Pope Julius II twenty years earlier.
The subject of Christ's Resurrection was
a particularly appropriate topic, allowing the Pope to make an
important statement about the enduring strength of the Catholic
church in spite of the 1527 Sack
of Rome and the Protestant Reformation.
After this time, Michelangelo remained in Rome until his
death, despite frequent solicitations from Cosimo de'Medici, whom
he despised, to return to Florence. Clement VII died in 1534, and
his successor, Paul III, urged Michelangelo to continue with the
Sistine altarpiece fresco. Paul III changed the subject, however,
from the Resurrection of Christ to the Last Judgment. Paul
also forbade Michelangelo from continuing work on the tomb of Julius,
so Michelangelo had to work on it in secret, with substantial help
from assistants.
Michelangelo began work on the Last Judgment in
the spring of 1536, finishing five years later, in 1541. The whole
while, he was hurried and pestered by Pope Paul III. The Last
Judgment is remarkable for its incredibly complex composition
and spatial organization. The central figure of Christ controls
the entire wall, controlling the anguished figures' spiritual destinies
as if they were puppets. This violent vision of the final division
between salvation and damnation was extremely influential in later
depictions of the subject, and the fresco's dark tone indicate
that Michelangelo may have been feeling sexual guilt and a certain
sense of foreboding. The issues of mortality and personal salvation
were central to the artist's later art and particularly to his
poetry, to which he turned more and more at the end of his life.
The shift in his interest from the sensual Classicism of Neoplatonism
to a more austere version of Christianity was due in part to the
influence of the Reformation and its emphasis on personal salvation
and justification by faith.
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