Last Judgement (Fra Bartolomeo)

The upper part of the painting shows Christ the judge within a luminous almond, raising His arm as a sign of judgment, a typical gesture of iconography. He is surrounded by cherubs and seraphs, while below Him a flying angel holds the symbols of the Passion and two others blow the trumpets of the Apocalypse. On the sides, on benches of clouds, the Apostles and the Virgin Mary are arranged in two perspective foreshortened rows.

Below there are a series of figures arranged in a semicircle, today very incomplete, with the archangel Michael in the center. There are 75 figures, legible today mainly thanks to the existence of two copies, one of the Tuscan school (courtyard of the former convent of Sant'Apollonia, Florence) and a cartoon by Raffaello Bonaiuti executed in 1871, at the time of the detachment (Uffizi, Florence).

The figures of the angels in the center downwards are generally assigned to the Albertinelli. In the characters below there were various portraits that are scarcely legible today, including that of Giuliano Bugiardini and of Beato Angelico.

Overall, the work is inspired by the calm serenity of Perugino's works, or the Coronation of the Virgin in Domenico Ghirlandaio's Tornabuoni Chapel, but the artist detached himself from the 15-century style by creating a completely new monumentality, solemn and calm but also vigorous. He would have great influence on his young friend Raphael, who copied the setting of the figures in the Trinity and Saints of Perugia and who also had it in mind, a few years later, for the Dispute of the Sacrament in the Stanza della Segnatura.

• "Catalogue page" (in Italian).