Twenty-one years after the Sistine ceiling was unveiled, Michelangelo began reluctantly the great fresco of the Last Judgment, Figure 205. He worked on it for seven years, and it was unveiled on Christmas Day of 1541. How the choristers had the heart to chant the angelic message of peace and good will before it, I cannot imagine. Michelangelo was sixty-six years old, a disillusioned and embittered man, an alien in the corrupt and pleasure loving Rome of Paul III. He has put into the Christ all his contempt for mankind. The Christ who earlier wrathfully hurled the darts in the Umbrian plague banners has become a far darting Apollo, Figure 206, rejoicing in his dire task. Behind him the murky air is full of hurtling contorted angels, in aspect quite indistinguishable from fiends, who bear the implements of the Passion. Below, the just and unjust rise or fall in knots and festoons of writhing nude bodies all equally sinister. The conception is violently corporeal, and never elsewhere in painting has the human body been used with such ingenuity and power. But it is a power that defeats itself. I believe the spectator is not so much appalled as confused before the Last Judgment. Its vehemence seems so unrelieved and insensate. If this be indeed the goal of mankind, no wonder moody Adam in the ceiling above faces his Creator with doubt and a hint of distrust. [Illustration: FIG. 206. Michelangelo. Christ with the Virgin and the Apostles. From the Last Judgment. ] Its sheer display of force won all contemporaries, and the French critic and superman, Stendhal, has highly praised the work for its burning energy. While not sharing his enthusiasm, I gladly refer the reader to his admirable pages. In my own opinion the creative ardor of Michelangelo had waned by this time. He offers, instead, his spleen, which is more valuable than most men’s genius, and his amazing technical skill. Michelangelo has become Michelangelesque. That is deplorably true in the frescoes for the Pauline Chapel which were finished in 1547, his seventy-second year. Nothing is left but sensationalism, and the Pope does well not to exhibit these works. As regards humanity, Michelangelo’s vein is completely exhausted. He still is capable of exquisite calculation, as in the design for the dome of St. Peter’s, still retains a dæmonic capacity for work and emotion, but the sculptor in him is nearly dead and the painter completely so. The poet of the rugged sonnets has superseded them both. When he died at 89, in 1564, the little ill-favored body was honored like that of a king. His sheer power had swept the whole rising generation of artists under his sway. To their own hurt and to the bankruptcy of the Golden Age.