The Last Judgement

Artwork: The Last Judgment

Artist: Pietro Cavallini

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Created: 1293 (fresco detail)

Dimensions: 126 x 551 in/ 320 x 1,400 cm (full size)

Location: Church of Santa Cecillia, Rome, Italy

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“Pietro Cavallini (c. 1260-1330) was a painter and mosaic designer who worked mostly in Rome.

Cavallini’s work marks a significant development in early Renaissance art, and signals a transition from the heavy stylization of Byzantine art toward a more naturalistic and three-dimensional interpretation of figures. This detail comes from The Last Judgment, which was part of a fresco cycle in the Church of Santa Cecillia in Trastevere, Rome, and is considered to be one of his most important surviving works. The fresco in its entirety demonstrates the artist’s grasp of three-dimensional figures, which are conceived in a monumental, almost sculptural manner, while retaining something of the Byzantine past in their arrangement. Significantly, Cavallini worked with the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio on this fresco, which in part accounts for the sculptural quality of his figures and the convincing folds of drapery. This detail depicting angels demonstrates the particularly soft and colorful palette that the artist used in the cycle, especially through his treatment of their wings. He approached the angels’ wings in an innovative manner, building up layers of dense color from dark to light to create an overall sparkling and ethereal effect.

They appear fully three~dimensional, a fact that is further emphasizes by the flat orbs of the angels’ halos. The Last Judgement had a profound effect on Giotto, the Florentine master. His Last Judgment cycle in the Arena Chapel, Padua, from c. 1305, was clearly influenced by Cavallini’s fresco.”(TP)

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