DANTE's place in Michelangelo's heaven

DANTE's place in MICHELANGELO's HEAVEN


Among the many faces painted into Michelangelo's Last Judgment painting in the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1534-41), one face is instantly recognizable, the face of Dante Alighieri, the Florentine poet (1265-1321). He is painted in the shadows up in heaven and his face is hard to see:

I've circled him with a yellow oval here. He is painted to the right of Christ and St. Paul and just left and above the group of Old Testament figures (see previous blog entry on them.)

 

He is dressed in red, the Florentine cloth color, his head is adorned with green leaves, a laurel wreath, to signify he is a poet, and his face in three-quarter view is unmistakable.

Because of his fame as the writer of the Divina Commedia, his portrait was painted by Giotto during his lifetime and a death mask was made of his face after his death:

 

His small mouth, thin lips, acquiline nose, and heavy lidded eyes are all recognizable features in Michelangelo's portrait of him.

 

Michelangelo may have also been familiar with

two other portraits of Dante made in the 15th century, those of Castagno and Botticelli,

not to mention the 16th-century Raphael portrait of the poet in his Disputa in the same room as the School of Athens (1509-11) in the Vatican, down the hall from the Sistine painting:

Michelangelo turns his Dante in the opposite direction from Raphael's Dante and he hides him in shadow, but he places him in heaven and next to the group of Old Testament figures.
 

Michelangelo's Dante seems to be looking intently at the Old Testament sets of brothers we have discussed in another blog, Cain and Abel embracing, and Esau and Jacob to the right of them with cloak and bared back. 

          Why does the artist place Dante in heaven and why next to these Old Testament figures? For the first question, the artist acknowledges Dante's greatness as a poet by putting him in heaven with a laurel wreath; Dante is rewarded for his literary genius. Since Michelangelo was a poet, too, he is also perhaps acknowledging his own indebtedness to the earlier Florentine. We have seen Michelangelo's use of Dante's image of the "descending old flesh"("vecchia scindi da te la carne") from Purgatory XI in his own self-portrait in the Last Judgment painting here. But Michelangelo paints Dante in heaven also because Dante writes his own description of heaven in the third part of his famous work, La Divina Commedia. The artist is showing that he has read Dante's Commedia and paints his face as a signpost for the viewer to compare the ways in which he has changed Dante's own view of the afterlife in his pictorial version.

         Michelangelo adheres to Dante's ideas in his portrayal of Charon and his boat in Hell in the lower right corner of this painting. But the artist shows no Purgatory on the wall, and he imagines many Biblical enmities resolved in the heavenly realm, something not present in Dante's Paradiso. The artist also knows that Cain as well as Esau and Jacob are mentioned by Dante in his poem by name. Michelangelo's places Dante near these brothers to show the medieval poet how he re-imagines the fates assigned these figures in the Commedia. 

        Neither Cain and Abel nor Esau and Jacob are spirits that Dante the pilgrim encounters in his voyage to the afterlife. But they are referred to in his major work. Cain is mentioned twice, once in Hell (Inferno Canto XX, line 126) and once in Paradiso (Canto II, line 51). Both times Cain is used as a metaphor for the moon as Dante supposes that Cain was exiled to the moon by God as punishment for the murder of his brother Abel. Esau and Jacob are mentioned in Paradiso, (Canto VIII, lines 130-131), but the brothers are not seen in Heaven, just talked about by the French king, Charles Martel, whom Dante, the pilgrim, does see in Heaven. They are discussed by Dante and Martel as examples of two boys with the same father who emerge from the womb with very different characters.

           The fact that Michelangelo paints Cain into heaven, reconciling with the brother he killed, is a new view of God's treatment of Cain. 

 

 His painting of Esau and Jacob embracing in heaven is also a reconciliation not imagined by Dante.

        All of Michelangelo's revisions of Dante's view of life after death reveal Michelangelo's desire to show that his heaven is more compassionate than that of the earlier poet. His revision of Dante's description of the afterlife is radical. The poet does not look very happy in this portrait; perhaps the painter also imagines Dante's response to the artist's revision. The artist reaches back into history to find a worthy critic for his work, then defends his own vision with painted bodies next to his best critic's portrait.

                                                        

        

      

The Jews in Michelangelo's Heaven

The Jews in Michelangelo's Heaven

      We have examined in other blog entries the identities of Christian saints and popes in Michelangelo's heaven in the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, a fresco painted from 1534-1541. What did Michelangelo do about Old Testament figures, though? Does he consider any of the Jews of the Old Testament worthy of a place in heaven? The answer is yes, and the ones he paints there may surprise.
          The identities of the saints are clear in the attributes painted near them, like Catherine's wheel.
But the identities of the Old Testament figures are not always straightforward. In this blog I will make suggestions for identifications that seem apparent from the placement of the figures and the gestures or objects painted with them. Michelangelo selects out only certain Old Testament figures to portray; some of his selections are based on his own previous experience in sculpting Hebraic figures, and some of his choices are helped by the selection already made by previous artists, especially Lorenzo Ghiberti, in his Old Testament panels for the East door of the Florentine Baptistery. The ten figures (or couples) Ghiberti chooses are: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon and Sheba.  I think Michelangelo includes all 10 groupings in his Last Judgment, too.
          In the previous blog, we already saw that he includes Moses in the closest inner circle with Christ.

Since he had carved a larger-than-lifesize sculpture of Moses for Pope Julius II's tomb in 1513, he makes sure his intimate relation with the great Hebraic law-maker is repeated in the heavenly painted realm, too.  His great respect for Moses is evident in the solemn and dignified images he paints and sculpts. Moses is shown as a very old man, with long beard and grey hair in both media. His age separates him from the younger new Testament saints, such as St. Peter and St. Bartholomew near him. His aged features make him stand out in the circle as the oldest man in the group around Christ, a fact that signals he is from the "Old" Testament rather than the "New."
 

It might seem odd at first to see a Jewish prophet in the inner circle with Christ, but Jesus himself was Jewish, so the kinship with Moses is established at Jesus' birth because of Jesus' mother.  St. Mary, next to Christ, is of Jewish parentage. Her parents are probably near her in that circle, too:

I think the man and woman on either side of Christ, who look back at Mary, are her parents, Joachim and Anna.

The inspiration for the face of Joachim seems to have been Giotto's painting of Joachim being expelled from the Temple in his Arena chapel frescoes of 1305-6 in Padua; the beard, mustache and turn of the head are similar:

 

Anna's face shares features with Giotto's Anna as well, but both are pretty generic so harder to tell:

 

Mary's cousin Elizabeth, too, is married to a man who worked occasionally for the Jewish temple, Zacharias. Elizabeth and Zacharias are painted to the left of Mary and Christ, as we have already shown in the previous blog:

The presence of these Jewish relatives of Jesus in heaven, even on an altar wall in the Catholic papal chapel can be explained by their personal relation to Jesus. But Michelangelo and Pope Paul III and his advisers also thought about what to do with prominent Jewish figures from the Bible who were not part of Jesus' immediate family or story. Certainly they are interested in these people because they feel that their stories prefigured the stories in the New Testament. For example, Abraham's sacrifice of his son, Isaac in the Old Testament, was seen as a prefiguring of God's sacrifice of his son, Jesus, on the cross, in the New. But they also knew the Old Testament stories had value for their outline of human history.

        The artist here, therefore, reserves a special section of the Last Judgment for Old Testament figures of note. It is to the right of the central group around Jesus and up above some of the Catholic saints identified by their attributes. I have circled the section with a yellow line here:

The identities of several Old Testament figures can be discerned here, and they include the same list of figures or sets of two figures whose stories were told in the bronze door panels on the Baptistery in Florence by Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452.  Michelangelo called those East Ghiberti doors the "Gates of Paradise" because of their beauty, but he may have also thought that the Jewish history presented on them deserved to be preserved in the papal chapel and updated. Because Jesus is ultimately related to Adam through David, Michelangelo seems to have believed the Judeo-Christian chronology entitled particular Jews to a place actually "in Paradise" in his depiction of Heaven; their ancestral blood relation to Christ merits a high place in the realm of the blessed.

          Whom does he paint into this special Jewish section? On the far lower right of this group at the right edge of the wall is an old man with white beard who holds the cross that is also touched by St. John the Evangelist. Next to him is a woman whose face is hidden by his hair; are these not Adam and Eve, mother and father of all, in Genesis, the first book of the Bible?

Adam holds on to the cross with both hands as he looks toward Jesus. Eve cowers behind him, worried about her place in heaven. Are these the first original sinners?  They are joined together, as though a couple. His beard and hair make him look like the figure of God in Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Sistine ceiling, a way of reminding us that Adam was "made in God's image":

Eve here mildly resembles the Eves of Michelangelo's ceiling paintings, but those images of Eve don't resemble one another, so she is not as easily characterized:

 

 

Neither figure is as young as they are in the ceiling scenes; they have become the parents of the world and are placed at the edge of heaven, the furthest away from Christ's inner circle. They are old as Eden.  

           Adam's grasp of the cross signals they are saved, however. According to the Golden Legend (a synthesis of saints' stories written in 1329), when Adam died, his son Seth planted seeds in his father's mouth from the tree of original sin. The tree which grew on Adam's grave became the tree used in the Crucifixion of Christ. Christ's suffering on the cross and his Resurrection redeem the parents' sin and make it possible for them to live in heaven. The conversion of Jews to the belief that Christ, the Messiah, has actually come, is here given pictorial realization, when, in real history, many Jews were not converted and many continue to believe that the Messiah will come in the future. In paint Michelangelo has predicted a sea change in Jewish belief in the presentation of Adam grasping the cross.

        The figures painted directly above them, then, are some of the descendants of Adam and Eve. Their two sons, Cain and Abel are embracing at upper left of the group; Abel is younger than Cain and is the younger of the two men embracing; Cain is the older brother, the one who says to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Cain is the first murderer in the Bible. He kills his brother Abel out of jealousy when God prefers Abel's sacrifice of meat to Cain's sacrifice of wheat; does their reunion here suggest that Abel forgives his brother for murdering him? Are acts of hatred allowed if carried out before Christ's birth, or only as long as God pardons them in the Second Coming? Abel is the one to kiss Cain and Cain closes his eyes in disbelief that he has been forgiven. 

Abraham and Sarah are just above Adam and Eve.

Sarah touches her husband's shoulder with her left hand. Abraham's beard is extremely white and long, suggesting that he is the oldest of the descendants of the first parents.(I find Abraham's face less skillfully painted than the others, perhaps carried out by a helper.) With his left arm he points to and touches his son, Isaac, as he looks towards God/Christ.  Abraham held a covenant with God to such an extent that he was willing to sacrifice his own son on an altar to God.  An angel is sent down by God to prevent him from killing his own child, and a ram is substituted in his place. None of the elements normally shown in Abraham's story are painted here, but his touch and look give the viewer the sense he is showing God the son he was willing to give in honor of his beliefs.

          Isaac has his own story after he survives the sacrifice incident and becomes a father himself. Michelangelo depicts him as an old man, too; he has twin sons, Esau and Jacob, born in that order. Their mother, Rebecca, prefers Jacob, the second-born, and wants him to have the birthright and blessing of his father because God has told her in a dream that Jacob's descendants will form a strong and prosperous nation. Esau sells his birthright, first, to Jacob, in return for some porridge.  Then Rebecca takes advantage of a moment when Esau is out hunting to bring Jacob to Isaac for the blessing of the first-born. Isaac, who is blind, is fooled into giving the blessing because he thinks he is touching  Esau's hairy skin when he is really feeling the goatskins Rebecca has placed on Jacob. Esau was "a hairy man," the Bible says. Isaac's blessing aimed at Esau, falls on Jacob.

          Isaac is the man pointed to by Abraham; nestling near his face is his wife, Rebecca.

Isaac touches the hair of his beard (remembering his error in touching the goatskins?) as he looks at the twin boys embracing and presented in front of him. In heaven here Esau kisses Jacob as he stretches out from Adam and Eve, a position meant to convey the long line of descendants from Jacob who received the birthright that should have gone to Esau, the firstborn of the twins. Jacob's long bare back signals that he is not the "hairy" twin. Esau's has longer hair on his head and perhaps some hair on his back. Esau kisses Jacob to forgive his brother for usurping his power. All is forgiven in Michelangelo's heaven, murder, deceit, jealousy, and families go back to loving each other without reservation.

      The major Jewish patriarchs are present and accounted for here in this corner. Then below Jacob (naked back) is a another group of later Old Testament figures:

Jacob's son, Joseph, is the young man with the cape, his coat of many colors, surging out of his father's body:

Above Joseph is an old woman with a turban who reaches across the space of the group and touches the man whose head leans back to look at her. Is she not the exotic Sheba reaching out to meet Solomon in his Kingdom? The man who leans back is then Solomon as I have labeled him. The long distance she travelled to visit Solomon is implied in the two outstretched arms.

       Two other major figures in Ghiberti's doors are Noah and Joshua: are they the two young and old male figures left in this circle, Joshua with red hair, Noah with white. That leaves David in Ghiberti's list, the prophet and King, whom Michelangelo had sculpted in 1501-04 for the city of Florence.

Surely he has a prominent position near Mary, who was of the lineage of David. There is a young figure, similar to Longinus but on the left and above Mary in the central circle, who must be David, another Jewish king included in Christ's inner sanctum.

Does he still hold a rock in his left hand as his attribute? His right hand extends out in a fashion that rewrites the restrained positions of the arms in the artist's marble David and prefigures the active David sculpted in a later era by Bernini.

     Most of the Jews from the Old Testament stories are gathered in a group together over on the right side of the painting.  The two Jewish figures sculpted earlier by the artist, David and Moses, are given the privileged positions near Mary and Christ, whom he had also sculpted into the Pieta still in St. Peter's. Michelangelo pays tribute to the Jewish members of the community and to Gli "Ebrei" (Jews) from the Bible. They are up in heaven along with Christian saints as part of the longer history of Biblical religious thought. That they are blessed rather than sent to Hell is already a sign of the importance of their lives to the Christian story. That they are gathered together to the right of Paul, a converted Jew, is a sign of their linked cultural and genetic heritage that retains a dignity separate from the Christian story. But they are nude bodies, as all the other figures were before being covered up after Michelangelo's death. Their distinction is acknowledged by their separate grouping, but they melt into heaven along with all the other Christian saints and disciples. In the end they are just "naked souls" whose fates are decided in their favor within the clouds painted on the chapel's wall.      

            

                            

MICHELANGELO's SAINTS in the LAST JUDGMENT

MICHELANGELO's SAINTS in the LAST JUDGMENT


The realm of the blessed that Michelangelo paints into his Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (1534-41) is inhabited by many figures, both male and female. None of the figures have haloes, but most are saints considered worthy of being painted close to Christ and on the same level with Christ and Mary. Many of these saints are easily identified by the attributes they hold. Many of the figures have no attributes, however, and may not be saints, but some saints may have no attributes. Michelangelo seems to have included portraits of contemporaries among the saintly figures as well as among the unidentified. He also includes Old Testament figures who will be examined in another blog entry. While at first the groupings of people seem to have no order at all and are random, after examination arrangements emerge that give structure and meaning to the heavenly view he depicts.
           I have labeled the saints and figures that seem most evident in the realm of the blessed, starting at the right side of the clouds in heaven:

Beginning with the figures to the right of the standing cross on the far right side, two prominent attendants at the Crucifixion crouch behind the cross near the corner of the wall:  Mary Magdalen with her wavy red hair, and above her, Nicodemus, who helped take Christ down from the cross. Directly on the other side of the cross, as we move left in our identifications, is St. John the Evangelist, also present at the Crucifixion and surrogate son for Mary after Christ's death. John the
Evangelist looks down and holds his right arm up to balance the cross with his left arm that hangs down. We see his body stretched out in front of the cross as if he were considering what suffering a Crucifixion might entail.

The next major figure left of John the Evangelist is the kneeling St. Sebastian, who holds his symbols, arrows; though pierced in many places by the arrows, he did not die a martyr until he was later beaten to death; the arrows are associated with him, nonetheless. Next to him left is a woman leaning over to pick up a large part of a pronged wheel; she is St. Catherine of Alexandria, who was tortured on a wheel for her belief in Christ.

Standing above her is a man holding two instruments for carding wool, the symbols of St. Blaise (San Biagio in Italian). He was tortured with iron combs and becomes the patron saint of the wool carders.

He looks up at Christ, while the saint next in line looks down at one of his symbols, the saw, held out by another lower figure; the saint looking down is Joseph, the man who married Mary, but he is not the usual old man Joseph, but rather a middle-aged one; he appears to climb out of a wooden construction that looks very much like a coffin; Joseph, Jesus' father on earth, was a carpenter and the wood and saw are his material and tool.

The coffin may also be a reference to another Joseph, Joseph of Arimathaea, who gave up his own tomb for Christ's body after the Crucifixion. The two name saints are embodied in the same figure here with two different signs of the name.

The skin of St. Bartholomew that is also a self-portrait of Michelangelo (see the other blog entry on this skin) follows in the same line on the left, and, above this group, and easy to recognize because of the keys he holds, is the most prominent saint on this side, St. Peter. He holds the keys out toward Christ and looks at him in the center.
        Since Peter and Paul are usually paired together on altarpieces, and this is an altar wall Michelangelo is painting, it is natural to look around for the figure of Paul. He stands in a space all his own just behind and above Peter to the right. He and Peter both have white beards. The figure of Paul steps forward on his left foot and lifts his left hand higher than his right in wonder at Christ's light; he represents not just Paul, the early Christian saint, but Paul, the Pope who was Michelangelo's patron during the painting of the Last Judgment. He is Pope Paul III, a member of the Farnese family, a prominent patron of the arts. That he should wish to be remembered in a portrait as his name saint in heaven is certainly understandable; even if he didn't request this position, Michelangelo is enough of a diplomat to include him here as the funder of the project.



His hair is not as grey or ragged as it is in Titian's portrait of him on right, but his position behind the first pope and set off from the group of people behind him marks him as Peter's companion, Paul, and Paul, the Farnese Pope who  commissioned the Last Judgment. Compare his portrait here with Michelangelo's later portrait of him  as St. Paul in the Pauline Chapel cycle:

        His position also explains why, when Pope Paul III was asked by Biagio da Cesena to intercede on his behalf when Michelangelo painted Biagio's portrait as Minos in Hell, he is said to have replied, "Well, I might have some say in heaven, but not in Hell." He already knew he was painted into the heavenly realm and need not worry about the fate of his master of ceremonies. His hand gestures suggest awe at beholding the deity and he steps gingerly, as if treading on sacred ground. His beard has been tidied up for his presentation in heaven:

What he beholds, from Michelangelo's point of view, is not just Christ, but the entire project of St. Peter's, the basilica to which the chapel is attached. After we have examined the rest of the identifications, it will become clear why this is so.
           In the center above and behind St. Peter is Moses. He is older than the saint, his beard is longer, his facial skin as ashen as the skin of St. Bartholomew, and while he no longer has the horns that he had in Michelangelo's sculpted portrait of him, the treatment of his hair and his face are very similar to the sculpted version.  The reaction he has to the judgment of Christ cedes power to the central deity. (The translation error in Jerome that led to Moses being depicted with horns in 1513 has been corrected in this painted image of him.)

 
Moses in the Last Judgment raises both hands, and his right shoulder painted in a plane with his torso almost looks like the tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai as conceived by Michelangelo in his statue of Moses of 1513. It is worth keeping in mind that that statue of Moses made for Pope Julius II originally was to have been placed in St. Peter's, not in St. Peter in Chains, where it is today.  Julius wanted his tomb to be in the center of the crossing in the great basilica, and Michelangelo may be placing Moses close to Peter here as compensation for that wish denied. Moses is an Old Testament figure, but in Venice during this period a church is built to him as a saint, San Moise, so his presence here in heaven surrounded by Christian saints is not unusual; he is Saint Moses. (Venice also consecrated churches to Samuel and Zacharias.)

Below left of Moses from the viewer's stand and next to Peter's keys is a nude woman with her left hand out; is she wearing a bracelet to indicate wealth? I think she is St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first emperor to convert to Christianity and build the first church of St. Peter's in Rome. Above Moses hovers another male figure associated with the Crucifixion, Longinus, the Roman centurion who converts after sticking his spear into Christ's side. When Longinus sees water and blood flow from the wound, he

is so moved that he purportedly says, "Behold, surely this man is the Son of God." In Michelangelo's painted Longinus, he lifts his hand up as if to reenact his conversion.
          Below Christ on either side are St. Bartholomew on the right (from the viewer's perspective)and St. Lawrence on the left.

Lawrence was martyred by being burned on a grill and is supposed to have said during the process, "Turn me over, I'm done on this side," refusing to give in to the pain and suffering of being burnt for his beliefs. In Michelangelo's version he is inserting his arm into a section of the grill and holds on to one of its rungs as he bends over to look up at Christ.
          Mary is placed above Lawrence and under Christ's raised right arm. She looks towards the group of figures to her own right. Who are the saints in this group? The one with the clearest attribute is St. Andrew, who faces away from us and holds an x-shaped cross with his right arm nearest Mary; Andrew's symbol was an x-shaped cross.

Above him is a woman whose clothes wrap around her face and body and are emphasized: I think she is Veronica, who wiped Christ's face with her veil while he carried the cross. Her veil miraculously retained the features of the deity. Her veil billows out behind Andrew's cross in Michelangelo's image.
          Left of these two as we look at the wall is St. John the Baptist, the prophet who foretold Christ's arrival and who baptized Christ. He has been identified as this saint because of the animal skins that cover his genitals and wrap around his thighs; John is often depicted wearing animal skins to remind viewers of his time in the wilderness before meeting Christ. He is John the Baptist, but the features of his face resemble a portrait of Pope Clement VII painted by Sebastiano del Piombo in 1531:

 

Both men have long pointy noses and dark hair and beards.Why should Michelangelo choose Clement's face for John the Baptist? Clement VII was a Florentine, Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, and John the Baptist is the patron saint of Florence. Why include Clement VII at all, though, in a painting commissioned by Paul III?  Clement, who was Pope from 1523-1534, had actually been the first to request that Michelangelo paint The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine. He died before the artist began work on the wall, but he was Michelangelo's initial inspiration for the work, hence his prominent position in the realm of the blessed. 

          If John the Baptist is standing so close to Mary and Jesus, his parents will not be far behind;Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, John's mother, touches his arm as a mother might, while she looks towards her cousin and Mary's son, Christ, who is 6 months younger than John the Baptist.

 

Between Elizabeth and John emerges Zacharias, John's father, in the red cap and gown denoting his occupation as occasional priest in the temple. He was an old man when John was born and God struck him mute as a sign that his son's birth was miraculous. His red robe continues below the legs of Elizabeth and John, which suggests he is not just a Jewish priest, but a Catholic cardinal, too. His face, though bearded, looks very much like the portraits of Pope Leo X, whose real name was John, (Giovanni di Lorenzo dei Medici.) Has Michelangelo placed him as Zacharias so that he can be in heaven near his name saint, John the Baptist? If it is he, his position here also links him with his first cousin, Clement VII (also a Medici, but illegitimate son of Giuliano de' Medici.) These two cousins grew up in the same household with Michelangelo in the Via Larga palazzo in Florence. The artist then watched them become popes within his lifetime; they, in turn, supported his artistic career in Rome during their papacies. John (Pope Leo X) was pope from 1513-1521; Giulio (Pope Clement VII) from 1523-34, only two of the thirteen popes of Michelangelo's lifetime.

        It is worth comparing Zacharias' face with Valore Casini's portrait of Leo X in red cardinal cap with white beard added:

 

The bulging eyes, sagging facial skin, arch of the eyebrows, and worried look are the same in both portraits.

          What about Pope Julius II, who ordered Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? He is hidden under John the Baptist's legs; this figure, with papal tiara and long white beard looks very much like his portrait on Julius' tomb, a sculpted version by Tommaso di Pietro Boscoli:

Since a Protestant treatise of 1514, attributed to Erasmus, specifically excludes Julius from heaven, Michelangelo makes sure to include him, but hides and protects him between the Baptist and Andrew.
    Which brings us back to four of the saints painted in large bodies in the first inner circle around Christ: Andrew, Veronica, Helena, and Longinus. What is the point of putting these saints, who seem less important to Christ's story, in such prominent positions in heaven?  Even Peter's gesture, holding the keys towards Helena, Andrew, and Veronica, may be painted in by the artist to signal his intentions.

What KEY connects Andrew, Veronica, Helena, and Longinus?  They are all saints whose relics were owned by the Vatican and all saints whose relics were to receive special display in the basilica of St. Peter's:  each crossing pier of the building was to contain a relic of one of these four saints, and on the feast day of the saint, the relic would be presented to the public for veneration from the balcony of the piers (something which still takes place). By the time of the painting of the Last Judgment, these piers were in the process of being constructed in the crossing, and Michelangelo, as architect of St. Peter's, would have helped plan the central position of the saints' relics in them. The colossal statues for the niches would not be completed until the Baroque period, but Michelangelo, as a sculptor, is imagining his own versions of these statues and where they might go, Andrew and Veronica on the left, Helena and Longinus on the right. In fact, as you enter St. Peter's basilica's crossing from the nave, Andrew and Veronica's statues are on the left, Helena and Longinus are on the right, numbers 53 and 48, 50 and 49:

                                                                         Helena


Veronica

Andrew                              Longinus











                                                                
          In the process of painting the saints into heaven Michelangelo is laying out on the altar wall the design elements for the basilica which stands right next door:

Far from a Universal Judgment (Giudizio universale, as it is known in Italian), Michelangelo's heaven is populated by people he knew, name saints of deceased popes, and saints whose body parts make a physical connection to the history of the Vatican monument.

(The actual relics are: for Andrew, his head; for Veronica, a piece of her veil; for Helena, a piece of the True cross which she retrieved from Jerusalem; for Longinus, a piece of his spear.)

For the inclusion of Old Testament figures in Michelangelo's heaven, see the next blog.