What Happened to the Last Judgement in the Early Church?
2009; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 45; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0424208400002382
ISSN2059-0644
Autores Tópico(s)Byzantine Studies and History
ResumoThe Last Judgement was one of the most important themes in Christian art from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. It can be found in glittering mosaics on the west wall of the cathedral on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon, on the sculptured centre portal of the west façade of Notre Dame in Paris, in Luca Signorelli’s haunting frescos in the Chapel of the Madonna of San Brizio in Orvieto, and in Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel. Numerous other churches had their own ‘dooms’. A dramatic but not untypical example from the twelfth century can be found above the entrance to the Church of Sainte-Foy at Conques. Christ is enthroned as an austere judge, dividing the saved from the damned. The procession to heaven is neat and orderly while hell is chaotic, being depicted as a hideous mouth devouring the damned, a common representation in medieval art. In ominous foreboding, this Romanesque Last Judgement rivals the thirteenth-century hymn, the Dies Irae , as a reminder of the coming ‘day of wrath and doom impending’.
Referência(s)