Last Judgment; after Michelangelo's fresco in the Sistine Chapel
Medium
Engraving; three plates
Dimensions
Irregularly shaped: approx. sheet: 25 1/2 x 28 1/8 in. (64.8 x 71.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
Accession Number
59.570.45(1)
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
This engraving by Giorgio Ghisi captures Michelangelo’s monumental *Last Judgment* fresco from the Sistine Chapel, completed just a few years earlier in 1541. Created around 1545, the print translates the dramatic scene of Christ’s second coming and the resurrection of the dead into a large-scale reproductive work. Ghisi’s careful line work preserves the powerful gestures, swirling figures, and emotional intensity of Michelangelo’s original, allowing viewers far from Rome to experience one of the Renaissance’s most ambitious compositions. Printed on three separate plates and measuring over tw...
About the Artist
Michelangelo Buonarroti|Giorgio Ghisi · 1475–1564
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) stands as the quintessential figure of the Italian High Renaissance, a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet whose mastery across disciplines embodied the era's humanist ideals. Born on March 6, 1475, in Caprese within the Republic of Florence to a modest family—his father, Lodovico di Buonarroti Simoni, served as a minor magistrate—Michelang...