"The Apostles in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment stand on each side of the Saviour, who is not, here, Saviour and Redeemer, but inexorable Judge. They are grandly and artificially grouped, all without any drapery whatever, with forms and attitudes which recall an assemblage of Titans holding a council of war, rather than the glorified companions of Christ."—Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, i. 179.
The Sistine Chapel is associated in the minds of all Roman sojourners with the great ceremonies of the Church, but especially with the Miserere of Passion Week.
"On Wednesday afternoon began the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel.... The old cardinals entered in their magnificent violet-coloured velvet cloaks, with their white ermine capes; and seated themselves side by side, in a great half-circle, within the barrier, whilst the priests who had carried their trains seated themselves at their feet. By the little side door of the altar the holy father now entered in his purple mantle and silver tiara. He ascended his throne. Bishops swung the vessels of incense around him, whilst young priests, in scarlet vestments, knelt, with lighted torches in their hands, before him and the high altar.
"The reading of the lessons began.[346] But it was impossible to keep the eyes fixed on the lifeless letters of the missal—they raised themselves, with the thoughts, to the vast universe which Michael Angelo had breathed forth in colours upon the ceiling and the walls. I contemplated his mighty sibyls and wondrously glorious prophets, every one of them a subject for a painting. My eyes drank in the magnificent processions, the beautiful groups of angels; they were not to me painted pictures, all stood living before me. The rich tree of knowledge, from which Eve gave the fruit to Adam: the Almighty God, who floated over the waters, not borne up by angels, as the older masters had represented him—no, the company of angels rested upon him and his fluttering garments. It is true I had seen these pictures before, but never as now had they seized upon me. My excited state of mind, the crowd of people, perhaps even the lyric of my thoughts, made me wonderfully alive to poetical impressions; and many a poet's heart has felt as mine did!
"The bold foreshortenings, the determinate force with which every figure steps forward, is amazing, and carries one quite away! It is a spiritual Sermon on the Mount in colour and form. Like Raphael, we stand in astonishment before the power of Michael Angelo. Every prophet is a Moses like that which he formed in marble. What giant forms are those which seize upon our eye and our thoughts as we enter! But, when intoxicated with this view, let us turn our eyes to the background of the chapel, whose whole wall is a high altar of art and thought. The great chaotic picture, from the floor to the roof, shows itself there like a jewel, of which all the rest is only the setting. We see there the Last Judgment.
"Christ stands in judgment upon the clouds, and the apostles and his mother stretch forth their hands beseeching for the poor human race. The dead raise the gravestones under which they have lain; blessed spirits float upwards, adoring, to God, whilst the abyss seizes its victims. Here one of the ascending spirits seeks to save his condemned brother, whom the abyss already embraces in its snaky folds. The children of despair strike their clenched fists upon their brows and sink into the depths! In bold foreshortening, float and tumble whole legions between heaven and earth. The sympathy of the angels; the expression of lovers who meet; the child that, at the sound of the trumpet, clings to the mother's breast, is so natural and beautiful, that one believes oneself to be among those who are waiting for judgment. Michael Angelo has expressed in colours what Dante saw and has sung to the generations of the earth.
"The descending sun, at that moment, threw his last beams in through the uppermost windows. Christ, and the blessed around him, were strongly lighted up; whilst the lower part, where the dead arose, and the demons thrust their boat, laden with damned, from shore, were almost in darkness.
"Just as the sun went down the last Psalm was ended, and the last light which now remained was extinguished, and the whole picture-world vanished in the gloom from before me; but, in that same moment, burst forth music and singing. That which colour had bodily revealed arose now in sound: the day of judgment, with its despair and its exultation, resounded above us.
"The father of the Church, stripped of his papal pomp, stood before the altar, and prayed to the holy cross; and upon the wings of the trumpet resounded the trembling quire, 'Populus meus, quid feci tibi!' Soft angel notes rose above the deep song, tones which ascended not from a human breast: it was not a man's nor a woman's: it belonged to the world of spirits: it was like the weeping of angels dissolved in melody."'—Anderson's Improvisatore.