Solar Symbolism
Apart from the technical mastery, the painting is noted for its radical departures from traditional depictions of the Last Judgment. In particular, firstly, the overall structure seems to swirl around Christ at the center, replacing the traditional pattern of horizontal layers depicting heaven, earth and hell; and secondly, the figure of Christ himself, beardless and muscular, surrounded by light, which has often been compared to the Greek sun-god Apollo. One week before commissioning the work, Pope Clement VII is known to have been studying the new heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus. There seems a real possibility that the painting is in part as an allegory of the new cosmology, with Christ as the sun in the centre of the universe.
Read more about this topic: The Last Judgment (Michelangelo)
Famous quotes containing the words solar and/or symbolism:
“Senta: These boats, sir, what are they for?
Hamar: They are solar boats for Pharaoh to use after his death. They’re the means by which Pharaoh will journey across the skies with the sun, with the god Horus. Each day they will sail from east to west, and each night Pharaoh will return to the east by the river which runs underneath the earth.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)