The Universal Judgment

When Michelangelo finished the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the swarm of naked bodies scandalised parts of the Church almost at once. In 1549 Cardinal Alessandro Farnese asked Marcello Venusti, a painter who knew Michelangelo, to make him a careful painted copy for the family collection. Venusti worked from the fresco while it was still untouched. Then in 1565, the year after Michelangelo died, Pope Pius the Fourth had loincloths and drapery added over the nudes to make the scene decent, and those additions are still on the wall today. This small panel in Naples, made before that cover-up, is now one of the closest records we have of what Michelangelo actually painted.