57: Mike's Last Judgment

classical stuff, a podcast. I'm trying to change it up forever. You changed it. So we always start with the hello, and we'll see you in the next one.

So classical stuff, welcome to classical stuff you should know. It's a major matter. This is a podcast about the ancient world, classical education, classical things, and it is run by a couple of classical educators. We all work at a school called Veritas Academy in Austin, Texas.

Indeed, we do go defenders. Go defenders, go. Go big blue. Defend the thing.

Defend. Keep them out of that. Traditional sheep pen. What?

Classical education, I don't know. They never say we leave it what we're defending. I thought you were just talking about the classical sports that we play, sheep hurting one of them. What are some of your favorites?

Oh, Tabor Toss. You guys talking naturally? Tabor Toss. Or some other good ones.

The poetry composition. Yes. Anyway, my name is Graham Donaldson, and I'm joined here with my colleagues and fellow classical files. That sounds awful.

I don't like it. I don't like it. A.J. Hanenberg.

I think it's a classic story. A.J. Hanenberg. That's me.

And Thomas Megbee. Hello. And audience, I get the sense that you're going to have to dig deep into your imaginations today. Go into your inner eye, because from what I understand, we are discussing a painting on this podcast.

Yeah, and my two fellows are being big old naysayers. Like, they are sticks, and there's mud, and they are in it. We're discussing a visual thing in an auditory medium. I don't understand.

Yeah, because that's never happened before. It happened before, exactly. No one has ever discussed films. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, that's a great point. No one's ever discussed art. No one's ever discussed. What else?

That's it. Television shows. Television shows. What else is visual?

All right, fair enough, Touche. Yeah. It's going to be fun. There's an all-element to TV and movie, too, though.

Doesn't that make it easier to talk about? It's true. Yeah. OK.

Because I also play, like, this painting is an audio one. It's a whole. What? It's just a painting.

So, Hanenburg, school-less, uncultured, masses, the hoy poloy, we need to learn about the art. So imagine yourself on a European tour with the seniors of Veritas Academy. You are, I don't know, about 10 days in. You're tired.

You're probably sick, just because that kind of comes with the territory. You've been on an airplane. You've been stuck with this angry people, and sickness just kind of goes around. So you're probably sick.

You've been touring all day. And then you get into the Vatican, which is kind of awesome. Right. You're walking through your scene some of the most amazing sculptures you've ever seen, including one of Leakawan and his sons being eaten by snakes, including a very famous one of Apollo, including a giant golden ball that looks like it's been eaten by robots.

It's in the Vatican collection, and a big stone pine cone. Is it like a modern art? Yeah, there's a modern art right in the middle. And it's pretty cool.

Like it spins really slow if you can push on it. It's a giant pine cone of the robot. The robot ball, big kind of weird robot ball. Anyway, so you've been through this whole thing, and you have seen works from antiquity, beautiful, beautiful things.

You saw the torso of Ajax. They're pretty sure it's Ajax. It's just a torso. You've seen tombs, you've seen marble.

And how they acquired all of this art was not necessarily by the most scrupulous of means, back when the folks were running things. But it's there, and it's beautiful. And then you are ushered down this staircase, and you enter the Sistine Chapel. And it is packed.

It's packed with people. Wall to wall, and everyone is on these little boxes. And their tour guide isn't even allowed to talk to them. So you can take your ear piece out, no one is telling you about anything.

They've told you about stuff beforehand, and you walk in. And there are a bunch of Swiss guards that look very intimidating, and they are very actively shushing. They're in their orange and red pajamas. No, these guys are in black uniform.

They look intimidating. They're not pajama guys. And you look at the ceiling, because that's what you're supposed to look at. But it's not nearly as impressive as what's on the wall.

Over the wall in which you enter is the last judgment by Michelangelo. Michelangelo also painted the ceiling. But he painted this wall. And everyone, for some reason, thinks about the ceiling.

But I think the wall is, by far, more impressive. It's bigger. It's more easy to see. A few of the scenes in the ceiling are so small that you can't really tell what's going on.

He painted them from close up. And then when he stood on the floor, he realized you couldn't really see any of the action. And that's why a couple of the scenes are much easier to see. So the last judgment of Christ was painted by a felony Michelangelo.

You probably heard of him? Yes. He was one of four defenders of New York City. Yes.

I was just going to say. Ninja Turtle, Love Pizza, Apprentice of Splinter. Have I ever told you my answer? That says nothing to do with this podcast.

Have I ever told you my theory of X-Men and Ninja Turtles? How X-Men and Ninja Turtles have competing views as to how new immigrants to the United States integrate into society? Overthink it much? Yeah, a little bit.

No, seriously. Like X-Men eventually enter Congress. Enter Congress. Enter Congress.

Yeah, like Congress people? Yes, some of the X-Men run for political office. It doesn't mystique pretend to be a senator for a while. And so they go through the channels.

And then, I don't know, the Ninja Turtles, the first generation gets really upset with them because they're enculturating into this new place of television and pizza, but they're forgetting their roots of Japan. And so their sensei is making them do their old Japanese way of life with, and then they're combining it with skateboards and turning it on sort of taking this old and new world and trying to become superheroes. Anyway. Can I admit that that's literally never occurred to me when watching?

Ah. Yeah, different childhoods. Yeah. Apparently.

I did that every time. No, I do not think of this in general. That was much later. And this is Hat Tipped or Shoutout to Thomas White, who probably does not listen to this podcast, because he and I spent a long time sort of hashing that thing out.

I mean, that sounds like a conversation I want to be a part of. That was pretty fun. You do want to be a part of? No, it's pretty interesting.

Yeah. Anyway, so it's painted by let's talk about Mike and his life before we get into what's actually going on in the painting. So Michael Angelo was born in 1475, and he lived to be 89 years old and died in 1564. So you know when they say that the life expectancy was really small for years and years, I think the reason is because, yeah, there was more sickness, but also childbirth.

The child mortality rate wasn't saying. It's not like no one ever lived past 40. People lived to be old. It's not like big averages.

We do an average as it works out low. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and kids would die. There was sickness.

And it was harder to live that long, but it's like nobody lived that long. So his family was small-scale bankers, and the bank failed eventually, and his dad took a job in Caprizy, which is a beautiful place. Eventually, a few months after he was born, they moved back to Florence and at six years old, oh, I just dumped coffee on my all over my computer. That is a bummer.

There's a beer, child's drink. Oh, thanks. Should be fine. Crisis, crisis on the podcast.

Thanks. OK. No, we want to start. We're fine.

Yeah, this is going to be fun. Everyone gets to listen to stuff on the computer. Huh? You want to make a list of this?

Yeah, I'm making a list of this. It's kind of fun. OK. My favorite kind.

So this seems to be working. Everything's still functioning. That chinks is it. Yeah, well, you know, cross your fingers.

So his mom died at six, and then he went to live with a nanny and her husband afterward in the town of Sectiyano, where his dad owned a marble quarry and a small farm. Eventually, he studied grammar under the humanist Francesco, D'Arbino. And surprise, surprise, he did not like school. He liked to spend his time copying famous paintings and churches and hanging out with other painters that he thought were cool.

So growing up in Florence was, at this time, the epicenter of art and culture. The famous Medici family you guys heard of those fellows? So Medici's had gobs and gobs of cash, and they loved to give it to artists. One of these things was the Duomo in Florence, which is made out of beautiful white and green marble.

It's huge. And there's a baptistry right across from this big, beautiful tower. And when they originally built it, the church was so large, they couldn't find anyone who could figure out how to make a self-sustaining dome for the church. And so there was actually a giant hole in the church for about 50 years until they figured out how to do it.

Cool. All I know is that with the Medicis that sometimes they would be the patrons of these paintings. And so you have these paintings of like the Virgin Mary, Cradling Little Baby Jesus, and then in the background, there'd be this guy. And he's like, smiling.

And the baby Jesus is smiling at him, or like blessing him, and it's this Medici. And he gets to be in the painting. But that's kind of the way it was for all art. Exactly.

I was rich. And when I had people, I would hire an artist to make me famous and put me in famous scenes, and make me look pretty. That's right. When you've got all those sort of big famous coronation paintings, you'll have the bishops in the pope, and the guy being coronated.

And then right in the front row, you've got a banker. You've got this guy. Right where they belong. Right where they should be.

It's like Fashion Week, where you get to sit in the front row. Yeah. So he grew up in this beautiful place, where there was art all over. There was these beautiful statues and all the cornices, and the doors of the Babs history right across from the Duomo, are the gates of Paradise by Geberity.

They're beautiful bronze plates. And they were some of the first sculptures to use for shortening in perspective in relief carvings. And they just blew everybody's minds, because it was the first time they'd really seen that. You could look at it, and it looked like a 3D space.

Nothing like that had really been done before. And that would later elicit the gates of hell by Rodin. He actually made those to be the counterpart of the Gates of Paradise. I think those actual plates were now in the museum because they got washed away in a flood, and they were afraid that was going to happen again.

So the ones on the actual Babs history now are just copies. At age 13, he became the apprentice to Dominico Gerlandayo, who has a master in fresco painting perspective and figure drawing, and he had the largest workshop in Florence. So that's a pretty good get, right? Getting to be the apprentice to the biggest deal in Florence.

And fresco is where you're painting on still wet plaster, and then when it dries, it gets painted. Yeah, I think you're painting with plaster on plaster. It's kind of the deal. And in 1490 and 1492, he attended a humanist academy.

The Medici had founded. And there he sculpted a bunch of things. There was a famous Madonna of the Steps and the Battle of the Centaurs. And he wasn't super famous yet.

He was just kind of a sculptor. At 17, this fella named Pietro Torodiano punched him in the face and busted his nose. And that's why whenever you look at portraits of him, he's got this big cockadoo crazy nose, because it got bonked and it's all busted. What was it?

Yeah. I don't know what the vibe was. What was it about? Unfortunately.

In 1492, he went back to his dad's house, carved a big, beautiful crucifix to give to a church. Guess what it was for? Guess why he gave this crucifix to a church? No clue.

They fixed his nose. They let him fill with the dead bodies so he could figure out the anatomy of what was going on. Sure. OK.

They got crossed out of it. Yeah. So he leaves Florence briefly because of some political upheaval. The Medicis are ousted.

And then he helps, you know, and then he kind of, was this Medicis? I think this is a different thing. So I think Medicis are ousted later. But there's political upheaval.

He leaves briefly. And then he comes back and then he carves a couple of statues. And then there's a Medici that hires him to carve this thing. And he said, what I want you to do is make this statue look like it's been buried recently.

And then I can sell it as an ancient Greek antique and get a lot more money for it. And then both him and the Medici were kind of heisted by this middleman who concealed the actual price that he sold it for and took them both for quite a bit of money. And then the cardinal that he sold it to found out it's real vout that it was a fake. I feel like that goes poorly.

It actually went really well. He was like, that's pretty good work for a modern guy. So he invited the two artists to Rome. So in 1496, at the age of the ripe old age of 21, Michelangelo goes to Rome because he's already kind of famous as a sculpture with this cardinal.

Not with anybody else. He's not big stuff yet. So he starts doing work there. He does a statue of Bacchus that is rejected by the cardinal.

He who commissioned it. And eventually it's bought by a banker for his garden. Bankers get lots of art in ancient Rome. There's, we just do a history of bankers.

That's the reason the classical world exists, right? Bankers. OK, good. Thank you, our banker.

And you want to dedicate our, be a patron of this pocket. We will mention you all the time. And you're good will. And we will pray for your soul.

That's right. All right, so the French ambassador then commissions the Pieta. Have you guys heard of Pieta? Ever the Pieta.

Yeah, so the Pieta is the thing that kind of cements his fame. It is still one of his most famous statues. And it was for a tomb. He finished it at the age of 24.

So just for listeners, the Pieta, A Pieta, is where Mary is cradling the body of Christ off when he has come off the cross. That's that sort of scene where mother holds dead child who is also God is depicted in lots of paintings and lots of art. Have you guys seen the Pieta? I've never been to Rome.

So I've never seen, I've seen very little Michelangelo stuff in person, but it is very beautiful. He originally intended to be part of this tomb. And then it got moved around and eventually it is now housed in St. Peter's Basilica, the biggest church in the world.

So you walk in the front door and directly to your right is a big, it is now glassed off. It didn't used to be when I first saw it. You could walk pretty close to it. Now it's behind these big, plate, plastic things.

I think someone attacked it. Yeah, that's why. It's because for some reason people keep on attacking these statues and they started trying to smash it up with a hammer. And I think he got some smashing in before they finally caught the guy.

They repaired the statue. But now it's behind glass and you can't go close anymore. But it is beautiful. And what's striking about it is that Mary is young.

She appears to be 20 tops. And that doesn't make sense if Jesus is 33. But she should be a little bit older than that. But he was trying to give, you know, she's very virginal and he's trying to show her spirit more than her age.

And so she's cradling the body of Jesus. And there's all this flowing drapery. You guys should look at it. It is a beautiful, beautiful statue.

Well, as she's like the embodiment of not only the feminine, but of sort of what humanity's disposition towards God is supposed to be. It's receptivity of God's will, partnership in God's will. And then also, and I was like a beholder of God's actions on Earth. Christ dies on the cross.

And we are supposed to be like Mary mourning the loss. And then the joy that she has on a resurrection Sunday morning is supposed to be our joy as well. So it's not a historical representation of the scene. It's the symbolic representation of what human beings are supposed to be.

We are supposed to have that disposition that Mary has towards God. Right. And when he exhibited it, there was a big crowd. I heard Protestant, by the way.

I'm sure he gets it. He heard a guy say, there's no way Michelangelo carved this. That guy's only 24. And he was criticizing it.

And so at night, he got to Michelangelo did. He made a little mini-P.A. didn't stick on the guy's pillow. No, that would have been amazing.

That kind of speed at the front part. That was going to be awesome. He went back and carved his name into the sash that Mary wears across her chest. And I think it either says just Michelangelo, or this was carved by Michelangelo.

So yeah, it's still there. That's ridiculous. Yeah. So he's kind of a fiery guy.

All right. So he carved the pieta. And that sort of cements his fame. Now he's famous.

He heads back to Florence in 1499. And his commission to finish a project, someone else had begun, which is to finish the statue of David. He finished it in 1504. I would talk to you the statue of David the one.

The famous one with the big hands. Yeah. Now resides in the Academy of Florence. It used to be in this beautiful square.

And you can still see a copy of the David in this square. And we're talking it's got the David. It's got a bunch of other really famous statues. And you can just kind of go sit and look at him in this beautiful open air place.

And that's where it stood for hundreds of years before. Some doofus. Yeah, guess why they moved it? Someone attacked that one too.

Someone attacked it with a hammer and started bonking his toes all up. So he's just smashing the David's toes. And they caught him. And because it was kind of getting dirty and getting worn by weather and sun and stuff, they decided to remove it.

So now you can see it in the Academy. It is gorgeous. It has, he's got weak ankles. I think that's his only problem.

But it is a beautiful, beautiful statue. And from close up, it's got veins. It's got hairs. They have these unfinished statues that he was in the middle of carving and are just kind of halfway done.

Yeah, I love those unfinished statues. There's one set where he was drawing. The final project was going to be slaves, I think. And they're all unfinished.

So you see, it's almost like you see these men emerging from the rock. And in its unfinishedness, it's kind of like a modern art. It's just very beautiful. You should Google sometime just Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures because you see what looks like these forms emerging from this mass of marble.

And it's just really cool in and of themselves. The process is amazing. Maybe I'll do it. I have not.

I haven't spent much time in Italy. I have not seen one person either. But haven't you been on the trip with the kiddos? This may be my first one.

Oh, man. I'm excited for this. So cool. Oh, you're going to confiscate all the jewels, all the vapes.

I think the jewels are going to steal from someone else. Oh, no. It's like, oh, that's a weird gram. I've had to do that before.

I have to take mosaic tiles. That's kind of a problem. Yeah, that's a big problem. If everyone takes it, there's no mosaic anymore.

Students also like to purchase certain items in Pompeii that are that complex. And we're moving on. I've got more about this Michelangelo guy. OK, so at 30, now he's really famous.

He's done the David. He's done the Pieta. Those statues are just beautiful. And he is hired by the Pope, Julius II, to do his tomb, which was supposed to include 40 statues and be finished in five years.

During this time, he had constant interruptions. He never finished the tomb. The tomb was never done. Although he did finish a statue of Moses, which is now housed in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, which sounds really fancy.

It's in the middle of Rome. It's kind of close to the Colosseum. It's actually really quick walk from the Colosseum. If you want to go see the statue of Moses.

And he's pulling his beard to the side and seemingly in the motion of standing. That's what's remarkable about Michelangelo's work. Yeah, they're all movement moving. And there's not this repose where they're just standing.

There's flexing muscles and turning and motion. And he's grabbing his beard. He's a beautiful sculptor. Yeah, so we never finished that.

And then he was hired to do the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which I think, yeah, I was thinking of a different painting. So he does the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which took four years to do. And there was this guy, Bramante, who was working on St. Peter's Basilica at the time, that kind of wanted to see Michelangelo knock down a few pegs.

And so he convinced the Pope to commission him in a medium with which he was unfamiliar. So Michelangelo is a sculptor. He's been a sculptor for a long time. He doesn't actually like painting that much.

He even says that later. He likes to focus on sculpture. And so the guy said, hey, let's get you set up doing something else. And then just to knock him down, if you think.

He wanted to see him fail. And so Michelangelo looked at the ceiling. And what he proposed was far grander than the original idea. It ended up being 500 square meters of ceiling.

And with over 300 figures, there are nine episodes from Genesis in the center boxes, which are all really cool, from creation all the way to Noah. On the supporting ceiling are 12 men and women who prophesied the coming of Christ, seven prophets of Israel, and five sibils. So just prophets all the way around. And there's a bunch of stuff going on in the ceiling, which we can maybe talk about at a later date.

I don't want to get embroiled in all the controversies there. But he did the ceiling before and then did some other stuff. So then in 1520, he heads back to Florence, and they get him to make the Medici chapel, which contains the Medici Madonna that Michelangelo did. They also commissioned him for a library.

But in 1527, this is where the Medici get tossed out. So the Florentines toss out the Medici and restore republic. And then Michelangelo worked because he loved Florence on the city's fortifications. The city fell again three years later with the Medici back in power.

And do you think he was still in favor with the Medici? If he's making fortifications, I'm going to guess not. Probably not as much. So fearing for his life, he flees to Rome, and he leaves the Chaplain Library to be completed by assistance.

The last judgment, which is the painting I'm talking about, is commissioned in 1534 by Pope Clement VII. He's an older dude. He's an older dude. I think he was around 67 when it was finally completed or began.

It's around then. He worked on some architecture and then some other stuff, and then was commissioned to do some fresco. So at this time, he's just being commissioned all over the place to do all sorts of things. He was famous in his lifetime.

Oh yeah. And he was highly paid. We'll talk about that in a second, how he spent his money. So he didn't get knocked down a peg.

He did not. He actually killed it on the ceiling. He did a fantastic job. He tried to make me teach a math class.

Although I would probably fail at teaching the math class. But you're like, oh, that Donson. He thinks he's so hot. But then you actually crushed it.

No, I don't think I would. But you want to know the best thing? Huh. So after he finishes the painting that I'll talk about in a second, they hire him to work on Saint Peter's Basilica, who was being worked on by the first guy, Bremonté.

And so he finishes the work that Bremonté's taught. I thought it was going to be like Bremonté, like hired him to do his tomb or something. No. And then he actually has a marble pile of poop.

It's like a dog poop. He actually ended up doing the dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, which is massive and beautiful. Now painting it, not constructing it. No, he did architecture.

Oh, crazy. I mean, he didn't like lay the blocks in serve. Sure, funny design. But he's the one who designed and planned a good portion of Saint Peter's Basilica, which in its own right is a breathtaking piece of architecture.

It's actually really weird the way that they set up Saint Pete's. You can walk in and everything seems massive, but it doesn't seem as massive as it could because of the things they do with perspective. So you'll see statues stacked above each other. And they look like they're the same size from the floor.

But because you're actually looking about 100 feet up, the statue on top is double the size of the statue on the bottom. So it looks like they're the same size. It's a force perspective. Yeah, it's force perspective.

And even the windows on the facade of the building, it looks like a normal church building until you realize that those windows are like 60 feet high and the people barely peek over the railings. If you ever look at pictures, it is bizarre. It's the things they do with perspective. The funnest thing, I think, is that they put little plaques on the floor where the other basilicas of the world end.

So if you start from the back wall, well, this is where the Cathedral Notre Dame ends. This is where another cathedral ends. It's just huge. And the, oh, there's no interesting thing.

It actually rests on the tomb of Saint Peter. So he's built into the church. And they made his tomb load bearing. So if you remove his tomb, the church crumbles.

The church falls down. So this is very symbolic. The church is actually built on his tomb piece. Now, in the 1970s, I think it was, they were doing excavations in Saint Peter's Basilica and came across a first century burial, early Christian burial tomb in there and found, and someone who was buried there in a prominent place in the tomb actually had crucifix wounds on his feet.

Now, Saint Peter, the old tradition is that he was crucified and he was crucified upside down because he said he was not worthy to receive the same crucifixion as his Lord. But there's this crazy story from the 70s about the Vatican archeologists uncovering this early Christian. This is before Christians are legal in Rome. They have this tomb.

And then there's always been a tradition that Saint Peter's is built over Peter's tomb. But now they've got compelling archaeological evidence that there is the body, the bones of somebody who was crucified underneath the Vatican. It's crazy. When did you say that was?

In the 70s, I think. Yeah, I think it was a really good, there's a bunch of really interesting books about it. I've never read them, but it's just sort of a bizmonkers thing. The whole history of relics and the relics of saints and selling those and the movement of those and the ladies is adding this really fascinating.

Lord Croft. Yeah. So we can talk about his personal life. He was a devout Catholic, was a believer.

Despite being poor, or despite being rich, lived like he was poor. He lived in squalor. He would sleep in his boots and his clothes. He was completely indifferent to food.

In fact, his living in squalor probably prevented him from having many apprentices. He was just kind of a gruff, solitary guy. And no one really wanted to hang out with him there much. He may have liked the gentlemen or had feelings for the gentlemen.

He was often taken advantage of by models and stuff. And he also may have had feelings for a noble widow named Victoria Colona. So we don't really know about much about his love life. I don't think he ever married.

But there's a little controversy there. So let's head back and talk about the actual work that he did, the last judgment. So I will describe this to you, listener, as best I can. Did you already say how tall is this thing?

It is 48 feet by 44 feet. Yeah. People Google this thing. It's incredible.

It is absolutely massive. And if you Google it, you'll probably get a picture with some candlesticks in front of it. You shouldn't imagine that those are normal sized candlesticks. Those are almost person sized candlesticks.

They're at least three feet tall. And you're not even seeing it reaches a little bit further down. In fact, the far right figure is just over the door that you enter in. It's incredible.

It is huge in a completely mind-blowing way, which is why it amazes me that no one ever talks about it. So it took four years to complete. It contains over 300 figures. It's weird in a few ways.

First, almost all the males and angels were originally nude. And they were later partly covered. The angels don't have wings or even halos, which is a little bit different for painting at that time. He began the work 25 years after completing the ceiling.

And so he was nearly 67 when it was finished. The commission came from Pope Clement VII. But it was finished under Pope Paul III, who was a stronger reformer of the Catholic Church. And here's what it looks like.

At the very top, there are sort of two curved arches that are filled with scenes of angels carrying the elements of the crucifixion. Under the right arch is angels carrying a pillar. There's like 10 angels, and they're all carrying this pillar. And that's the pillar Christ was tied to for his scurging.

On the left, we see angels carrying the cross, and some carrying the crown of thorns. One of the angels carrying the cross is supposed to be, I think, one of the archangels. But I don't see how they make that conclusion. It's just a guy.

I don't know. I found this website that's kind of listed who a lot of the figures were. But a lot of them, they would say, this is maybe the princess who found Moses. And it's just a lady.

I don't see any identifying marks. It looks like there's one archangel, or one angel that is wearing armor. So perhaps that's it. But the only green.

No, the one on the far left, that's sort of his. No, the one they said was the archangel was the dude that seems like he sort of draped over it with his leg there in the center. Oh, no. All right.

Yeah, that's weird to me. What else? In the dead center. So that's sort of the first level.

One level down, there seems to be kind of a division here. And this is below the arches. So this stretches the entire wall. Is in the center, Jesus and Mary.

And Mary is on the left, and she's sort of looking down to the left in sort of an attitude of humility. And Jesus Christ is in the center. Now, what strikes you about that picture of Jesus? He doesn't look like the Jesus that I'm familiar with.

No beer. He's beerless. What else do you notice about it? He looks very young.

What else? He's got red hair. He has strangely red hair. Anything else?

His proportions and kind of off his head seems really small. I don't know if that's what he's doing. He's jacked. So that is typical of Michelangelo.

Everyone in this painting is jacked. Everyone has square torso problems. But he's wounded. He's always he's wounded.

He's got the spear. He's got the spear. He's got the spear. He's got the spear.

It's very calm. He has a hand raised in what looks like he's about to lower it, forcefully, like a slap or a smoke. He's about to smoke. He's about to smoke.

What's his other arm doing? It is almost reaching towards Mary or protecting. It sort of crosses chess in the middle. What is around Jesus and Mary to the left?

You guys are helping me out with this. This is great. What's around them? What is the left right?

There seem to be more like a few different levels. This is the second level down from the top. They are certain. It's a circle of people around them.

OK, yeah, there's just gobs and gobs of people. I would say you can say it's a great cloud of people. Yeah, I don't know guys. I'm a bunch of them are terrified.

Yeah, like that lady just to the right looks like she's freaking out. Yeah, there's one guy who's holding like the skin of a person. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Anything else?

Anybody holding stuff? You guys holding a ladder? There's one guy holding a ladder. Okay, guy holding the ladder.

Anything else? There's a lady that's like, or yeah, a lady who's looking away. He doesn't want to look. Looks like there's an old dude in a red robe that fell down, can't get up.

What's the width of the left? Is that another cross? Yeah, there are a few different crosses in here, actually. Okay, there's one right now.

Mary. Yeah, there's another one below right. Yep. There's a piece of curve with spikes on it.

There's one guy who's holding up his fist towards Jesus a little bit. Another cross on the far right. So there's two angels kissing? The key.

Oh, keep the kingdom to the right. There's people smooching. All right, so it's pretty interesting bunch of folks, right? And Waldo, yeah, I found him.

Yeah, there he is. Okay, so that is level two. So there's the two arches and then directly below that is sort of a big crowd of people. And they're all standing on clouds and behind them is nothing but sky, right?

Below that, what do you see? Sad people. No, wait, is that a blow dart? No, horns?

Okay, so in the middle, let's start with the middle and then we'll talk about the left and the right. Yeah, there's angels blowing trumpets. There's angels blowing trumpets. Okay, there's an eye with the book.

Okay. And it looks like he's like, looks like he's sort of showing the book to Karen, the boat guy. Okay, and then look to the left of that guy with the book. A book, a little book.

There's a little book. Oh, there's a little tiny book. That's right. And they're pointing to the direction.

The tiny book is pointed down left. Yeah. The big book is pointed down right. And down right looks like souls are going to Karen's boats and he's taking them to hell.

Yeah, so down right, you see on the far bottom right corner, what does it look like there? Yeah, Karen's about to smack a fool with that paddle. Yep. Is there a snake around one of the bottom right?

Yeah, they are. There seems to be this hole in the sky and the far bottom right that looks like a portal into hell. Yeah. And standing in front of that are some dudes that look really intimidating and everyone on that side seems really depressed like they are being pulled or forced into hell.

In fact, many of the demons are pulling human figures from the sky downwards and the angels directly above those figures are also seeming to punch them downwards. These guys do not look like they're having a good time. And just right of the angels holding the books is a really famous figure. The dude that looks really upset.

He's got his hands. Yeah, he's being pulled to hell and he looks absolutely dumbfounded about his face. And he has his hand over his face and he looks really, really sad. And he's got a demon wrapped around him.

Drag him into his leg. Yeah. It's not a great scene. On the left side, we have people who are being pulled into heaven.

They're going the opposite direction. And while there are demons that are trying to drag them down, the angels are doing their best to bring them into heaven. So on the left side, we see souls rising. On the right side, we see souls going down and on the very ground level.

So three levels so far is the top arches with the angels holding elements of the crucifixion. The level below that is Jesus and Mary with the crowd of witnesses holding weird strange things like curved wheels with spikes and ladders. And then below that, we have the seven angels blowing trumpets. Those are actually the trumpets of judgment day, the seven angels from Revelation.

On the left, we have souls rising. On the right, we have souls going down. And on the far bottom level, we have, we actually hit land. So on the left is green grass and people are crawling out of their tombs if you look closely.

There are some skeleton faces that look real creepy because they're about eye level when you stand in front of the painting. And so you're just staring into skulls, which is pretty intense. And they are climbing out, excuse me. They're climbing out and being perhaps in fleshed and then heading upward in the dead center.

They also look kind of scared. Everyone looks a little like, they're even the ones going to being assumed upwards. They've got looks of like, I don't know what's going on. Yeah.

Very happy out there. That's a little terrifying. And there kind of seems to be a cave right there in the middle that looks like there's demons trying to haul these people into hell and steal them, perhaps unsuccessfully. To the right of that cave is water.

And that's where we see Carl on the boatmaster who in this kind of looks like a goblin. He's green and he's got his big paddle, which looks like a really, really long wooden cooking spoon. And if you remember Carl on who's he? He's actually pronounced Karen.

Karen, he's the boatmaster. His job is to ferry the souls into hell. Is he a Christian figure? He is not.

He is a classical figure. In fact, he even shows up in, was it, was it, no, a guild mesh, right? Yeah. Well, kind of.

He's got a couple of different boats of death. But yeah, he is a classical, ancient, ancient Greek classical figure. I mean, his job is to, I mean, he shows up in Dante. And Dante was famous Florentine and he rode them in 1300s.

So Michelangelo would absolutely be familiar with Dante. Is Dante here? Did Dante make it into this painting? Do the snake wrap around him?

Kind of looks like him. We'll talk about that dude in a second. That dude with a snake is a bit different. There's actually the place I've found that shows while the figures are said that one of the guys climbing out of the tombs is Dante.

But I'm not sure I buy it because he's not wearing the typical hat that is attributed to Dante. I'm not sure he has a big schnoz and I don't see him carrying a book. I'm not sure that it's him. It's another one of those.

This is Dante when I don't see him. I can't see him. And then so Carl is whacking all these souls just as he does in Dante's story. He hits all the people with the paddle and then he is ferrying them across the shore to this seeming rift in the sky that goes into deep orange.

And from it, you can see issuing a whole horde of demons in the front is a fellow who is being with a snake wrapped around him. Now that guy is King Minos. What do you guys know about King Minos from Dante? This isn't, am I getting confused?

This isn't with the bull and the maze? Nope. That's a minute. That's King Minos.