Metaphorical painting: Michelangelo, Dante, and the 'Last Judgment.'

60 It is exhibited in Giovanni's pulpit in the Duomo of Pisa. The myths are summarized in M. R James, ed The Apocryphal New Testament, Oxford, 1924 repr 1975 563

61 If this is correct, the hill might direct specifically to the Mount of Olives overlooking the valley of Josephat, where Mary prays in the doubtful narrative where Christ ascended into Heaven, and where he is to turn back on the Last Day. It was also upon this hill that the Antichrist, according to fable was enthroned and where he was slain; diocese Bousset (as in n. 60) 227-29

62 Bibl. Apost. Vat. Riserva s 6 (130). This is the next to the first state of an engraving by dint of Lorenzo Vaccari, dated 1578. The use of tapestries as altarpieces In the lower right corner of the Last ballast Michelangelo painted an unmistakable quotation from Dante's Inferno [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1 AND 2 OMITTED]. The figures of Charon and Minos were easily recognized by means of sixteenth-century viewers, and to the not absent day no one has seriously questioned the concern although occasionally additional meanings have been pointed without It is not my intent to overturn this rare bit of consensus, nor is it my drift to contradict the many sources that take an account of us how well Michelangelo knew Dante's writings. Condivi, Vasari, Donato Giannotti, and Benedetto Varchi describe Michelangelo's down-reaching knowledge of the poet's work. Condivi claims that Michelangelo had nearly memorized it, and Michelangelo is cast as a "gran dantista" in Giannotti's dialogue.(1) like statements may be exaggerated, on the contrary there is too much converging evidence to gainsay them. Indeed, Michelangelo himself wrote piece of poetrys in praise of Dante, and he knew about a novel commentary on Dante soon after it was published.(2) The moot point is that the references to Dante's piece of poetry are perhaps too clear and too certain. The Charon/Minos clump points to Dante like a neon sign, instructing the viewer to use Dante's Divine Comedy in a certain number of way to give meaning to the Last understanding Art historians have responded through connecting many other figures in the Last long head to Dante's work, almost as if through showing two clear references to the Inferno, Michelangelo was supplying a lock opener to the rest of his painting, just as in the Medici Chapel the attributes he gave to Night be subservient to as a key to the meaning of the other three Times of Day.(3) It may true well be that we are meant to diocese other references to Dante in the fresco on the contrary certain art historians have taken this to mean that each figure can be correlated with Dante's characters, leading to a certain quantity of very unlikely identifications.(4)

There are, however, other things that these concerns can indicate. For example, Leo Steinberg has introduced a provocative explanation for the quotations: in order to display his disbelief in a material Hell, Michelangelo at handed Hell within "poetic parentheses" - as a fiction rather than as a theological truth(5) Although my have interpretation is a different individual I believe that Steinberg's proposal does something true important and substantially correct: it shifts our attention away from seeing Dante as a source work of images, and instead directs it toward the value, or meaning, given to verse itself. The question then becomes: what meaning does it have? Steinberg implies that numbers is fiction and therefore not true; consequently Michelangelo's use of it hints that Hell is a fiction, not an established fact within the Catholic faith. This argument recalls the words of Giovanni Andrea Gilio, whose dialogue Degli errori de' pittori circa l'istorie was published in 1564 single of the interlocutors objects to the inclusion of the "story of Charon" because it introduces a poetic fiction into the theological history of the Last Judgment(6) However, neither Gilio nor any other early critic advises that Michelangelo does not believe in Hell; it is rather a matter of his drawing from a source that is not scriptural, therefore not "true" Gilio does not doom Dante as propagating heretical beliefs, on the contrary rather as a poet who might mislead the unlearned. In doing in like manner Gilio joins a long tradition of reflection that opposed poetry to reality There are many variations upon the theme, beginning with Plato's banishment of author of poemss from his ideal state. In the centuries closer to Michelangelo's be in possession of poetry was condemned because it could undermine a correct understanding of dogma, in part because it directly appealed to the faculty of perceptions without control of reason, in part because the "poetic veil" could "make white appear black and black appear white."(7) The fact that numbers suggested more than a literal meaning made it render free of access to questionable interpretations, and this was particularly dangerous when the bring under rule was religious and when the audience had alone a weak grasp of theology.

Gilio was not alone in criticizing the Last discernment as a work that might not be understood by the agency of the unlearned. Lodovico Dolce, writing in 1556 and inspired by the agency of the letters of Aretino, made a great deal of the same point. In Dolce's dialogue, the Florentine upholder of Michelangelo claims that the Last intelligence contains "profoundly allegorical meanings understood through few." The fictive Aretino rejoins "In this he would indeed be worthy of praise, since it would strike one as being that he had imitated those great philosophers, who hid the greatest mysteries of human and divine philosophy beneath the veil of poetry, in the way that that they would not be understood by dint of the common people."(8)