West Wales Decorative & Fine Arts Lecture - Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement

Michelangelo’s “Last Judgement””

The 16th century writer Pietro Aretino wrote –“Your art would be at home in some voluptuous bath-house certainly not in the highest chapel in the world”. 
What was he describing? Michelangelo’s Last Judgement. Pope Paul IV threatened to destroy it and even in our own 20th century the writer Leo Steinberg condemned it as heresy. So what caused such an outcry? How did it differ from the traditional image and to what extent did it reflect the fears and uncertainties of a Church which the Protestant rebellion had rocked to its very core?.

Lecturer: Shirley Smith

Shirley Smith graduated from the University of East Anglia with a first class honours degree in the History of Art, specialising in the Italian and Northern Renaissance. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a part-time lecturer for the University of East Anglia and for the Department of Continuing Education of the University of Cambridge. Has run study days and certificate courses as well as residential weekend courses. Also lectures to the Art Fund and individual clubs and societies. She is particularly keen to set the art and architecture of the period in the context of the society for which it was produced