149 Paintings You Really Need to See in Europe: (So You Can Ignore the Others): iBooks Enhanced Edition by Porter Julian

Author:Porter, Julian [Porter, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

67. The Last Judgment

Tintoretto, Jacopo Robusti, 1562–64

S. Maria dell’Orto, Venice

Photo: Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource, NY

This is my favourite Last Judgment. It is huge — 1,450 x 590 centimetres. You must put coins in a light box to illuminate this immense canvas.

The painting is a bravura floor-to-ceiling tumbling piece, impossible to detail. Doomed souls slither down a sluice on a slippery, watery route to Hell, with the occasional blue-robed angel trying to save a soul or two. There is no justice here, just a rush for the exit. It is all motion and divine justice, punishment, and virtuous escape.

The move upstream to heaven gives the feel of a salmon run — with the necessity of high leaps. Some on the left are ascending to the top haven of safety and grace, but it is all a whirling struggle. The right side is murky, dark.

In the lower part, a waterfall flowing over a concave half-tunnel serves as a catchment area for the damned, who slip and slide, inevitably sucked up by black shadowy creatures, and below that the beginning of a crematorium. The lower right is a mad retreat down to the body-choked hell — no fire, it’s too wet.

Ruskin’s note on Tintoretto’s Last Judgment:

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