Apocalypse In Art

The Last Judgement, Leonardo Da Vinci (Renaissance: 1541)

Posted by Benji, Michael, and Weston , Wednesday, May 19, 2010 6:17 AM

"The Last Judgment" depicts the second coming of Christ, who stands in the center of the painting with the angels and saints radiating outwards. Despite the obvious Christian influences from the Bible, the painting incorporates several other religious figures from Roman and Greek mythology. The most obvious example is the boatman Charon in the middle of the bottom of the painting, who ferried people across the river Styx into the classical equivalent of the afterlife. Charon is put in a slightly different context in which he ferries the damned down to hell whilst Christ takes the saved to heaven. As the title of the piece suggests, it depicts what the artist interprets as how the events of Judgment Day, or the Day of Atonement will unfold. When put into historical context, Judgement Day is often considered near synonymous to the apocalypse, though it actually refers to the final and eternal judgement by God of all nations. In this painting, it appears in both religious and mythological form. In fact the apocalypse, in a way is as much mythological as it is religious, and it appears in documentation as far into the past as ancient Greek mythology. Thus, because the Renaissance was marked by a rise in classicism philosophy, in which a massive surge of re-interest in the classics blossomed, elements of Greek mythology make a rather natural cameo in Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Judgement."