num_pages: 375
description: This volume sheds new light on the celebrated Italian artist and fresco. Art historians long have noted the circular composition around the figure of Christ, yet no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered. Here, against the background of the Renaissance, the author uses art historical methods with an interdisciplinary approach to resolve the meaning of the fresco's iconography and circular composition. Through a fresh examination of sources, Shrimplin addresses the unusual and innovative features of Michelangelo's work. She weaves common threads between the Neoplatonic cult of sun symbolism, literary sources in Dante, Copernicus' theory of heliocentricity, and the Catholic Reformation revival of the traditional Christian analogy between the Deity and the Sun. She suggests a new biblical source for the fresco as well as the broader implications of her hypothesis. Written in a clear, effective style, Sun Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" contains some strikingly acute observations, careful examination of a wide range of both primary and secondary sources, an ambitious methodology, significant new research, and interesting conclusions.
language: English
title: Sun-Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment"
titlecomplete: Sun-Symbolism and Cosmology in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, V. 46)
genres: Art History
ratings_count: 3
publisher: Truman State Univ Pr