The Last Judgment of Savonarola

Abstract

Of the nearly four hundred figures in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Last Judgment fresco (1536–41), fewer than one hundred have been identified as recognizable individuals (fig. 1). Most of these are canonical: many are biblical (Christ, the Virgin, John the Baptist); others are saints, distinguishable by the attributes of martyrdom (Sebastian, Bartholomew, Lawrence); and some are characters of a mythological cast (Minos, Charon). Fewer still are apparent portraits of Michelangelo’s contemporaries in the guises of particular saints or sinners. One of the few perceptible personalities to appear, not in an allegorical mien but