Roman painter, late 16th - early 17th century

(Atelier of Marcello Venusti ?)

Oil on canvas

158 x 111 cm.

In magnificent antique frame 180 x 135 cm. (Bearing upper heraldic coats of arms of the family of origin)

Excellent condition

This is an extraordinary work executed in the early 17th century that reproduces the celebrated Last Judgement frescoed by Michelangelo Buonarroti between 1535 and 1541, commissioned by Pope Clement VII to decorate the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel and still considered an absolute masterpiece of Western art.

Buonarroti's Last Judgement is a magnificent work, capable of arousing strong emotions from the very first glance, with its whirlwind of over 400 figures revolving around the judging Christ in the centre, depicted half-naked like a classical hero, with the Virgin at his side.

We see depicted the moment when the angels sound the trumpets for the unleashing of the Apocalypse, with Christ resurrecting the dead and calling the blessed to heaven and ordering the angels to cast the damned into hell.

At the apex of the composition the angels carry the instruments of the Passion, the cross, the crown of thorns and the scourging pillar, while around the figure of Christ are arranged in a crown some characters from the Old Testament, such as apostles, prophets, heroines, sibyls and patriarchs, and saints, martyrs and virgins also appear. In the band below, below the angels with trumpets holding the sacred scriptures, on the left, the resurrection of the dead is depicted, some of whom ascend among the blessed, while others are cast into the coils of Hell, welcomed into the boat by Charon and seized by the devils.

The particularity of our work is its value as a historical document, showing Michelangelo's fresco in its entirety, before the censorship imposed by the Council of Trent in 1564, which led to the covering up of the nude scenes, considered indecent and allusive to Paganism.

Various reproductions have been made of Michelangelo's Last Judgement, both in ancient and modern times, some have wanted to faithfully reproduce the entire work on a reduced scale and others have limited themselves to studying details by reproducing them more or less faithfully. One of the most important copies is the panel painting by Marcello Venusti (Como c. 1515 - Rome 1579), an original copy that Cardinal Alessandro Farnese commissioned from the artist in 1549 so that he could keep a representation of Buonarroti's original work, and which is now in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples (Fig.1 - Link: https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/1500625201).

Shifting our gaze now to our composition, Michelangelo's scene is here masterfully rendered thanks to the hand of a talented painter, presumably active in Rome at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, and therefore only a few years after the execution of the Master's Judgement, and who could well be identified as a painter from Venusti's fervid workshop.

In Rome, Venusti had in fact found a network of friendships and commissions that led him to success, becoming one of the protagonists of that historical and artistic phenomenon that saw the diffusion in reduced formats of the inventions perfected by Michelangelo.

The pictorial characters, of great expressive power, are accompanied by a rich and vivid colour palette that has been well preserved over time, allowing us to admire the work in all its detail.

These replicas were not only made by Venusti and his workshop, but Michelangelo's inventions were replicated by many other artists; varied, amalgamated, reduced and enlarged to meet the taste requirements prevalent in mid-16th century Rome.

Other works taken from the great masterpiece include:

- Antonio Campi and workshop (Grazio Cossali ?), Last Judgement, second half 16th century, oil on canvas, 168x138.5 cm. Creval Collection, Sondrio Fig.2

- Ambito di Giulio Clovio, Last Judgement, c. 1570, tempera on parchment, Florence, Casa Buonarroti Fig.3

- Giovanni Battista Moroni (completed in 1580 by Giovan Francesco Terzi), Last Judgement, Church of San Pancrazio (Gorlago, Bergamo) Fig.4

- Niccolò Della Casa (by Michelangelo), Last Judgement, 1543 - before 1562, burin Fig.5

- Hendrick van Balen (Antwerp 1575-1632), Last Judgement, Dorotheum Vienna, 30.04.2019 (https://www.dorotheum.com/it/l/6154392/)