...e fa dolce la morte: Love, Death, and Salvation in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment"

Abstract

The presence of people embracing and kissing each other in the Last Judgment has caused astonishment and lack of understanding among Michelangelo's contemporaries as well as in modern scholarship. An explanation is proposed through a close reading of Michelangelo's poems which he wrote during the planning and execution of the fresco and which he dedicated to Tommaso Cavalieri, with whom he was passionately in love. Though referring to various topics originating from medieval mysticism,Petrarchan love-lyric and Renaissance Neo-Platonic love-treatises, Michelangelo's poems strip away the traditional allegorical and metaphorical meaning of representation of physical love. Rather, earthly interpersonal love is the indispensable prerequisite for eschatological salvation and immortality, both for lover and beloved, their love finding fulfilment only in death. This reading of Michelangelo's poetry also allows for a new perspective on the artist's self-portrait on the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew.