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Liana De Girolami Cheney
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2022.06.001
Professor of Art History (emerita), UMASS Lowell, USA
This essay discusses the manifold depictions of Saint Michael The Archangel in Italian Renaissance art, in particular in Giorgio Vasari’s imagery. It starts with a brief explanation of who Michael The Archangel is, explores his visual iconography in pagan, Judeo-Christian, and Byzantine imagery, and examines the impact of Renaissance Neoplatonism on the interpretation of Saint Michael and his symbolic roles. The Renaissance Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino explained the significance of the Platonic celestial ladder as a spiritual vehicle for the human soul to achieve divine love. One step of this ladder is the Angelic Mind. It is here that the sparkling light of the realm of the Angelic Mind reveals the splendor and beauty of God’s grace. This is the realm where Michael, a Seraphim and a messenger of God, resides, delivering God’s messages of grace and love to humanity throughout the world. Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) visualized these divine messages metaphorically in frescos on two major vaults. The first is in the small cupola of the Pope Pius V Chapel in the Vatican, once called Saint Michael’s Chapel, where between 1560 and 1566 Vasari and his assistants painted al fresco the Saint Michael and the Devils, a depiction of Michael the Archangel combatting vices personified as demons who want to prevent human beings from obtaining the divine grace that will allow their souls to ascend toward heaven (Figure 1). Between 1570 and 1574, Vasari continued his metaphorical visualization of God’s divine message in a large vault, the octagonal cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Dome of the Cathedral of Florence, the major focus in this essay (Figure 2). He and his assistants painted al fresco the Last Judgment, portraying Saint Michael The Archangel residing in a heavenly realm—the divine reign of God, where he mediates and witnesses God’s divine judgment on humankind (Figure 13). Here, celestial trumpeters loudly announce the separation of good and bad souls of the terrestrial realm, Earth. The bad souls rapidly descend into a Dantesque infernal realm where demons capture them and transform them into hybrid forms. In contrast, the good souls quickly emerge from Earth to ascend into Heaven. Their skeletal figures transform into angelic beings, ready to receive divine grace and eternal love.
Saint Michael, Giorgio Vasari, Last Judgement, Dome of Florence, Neoplatonism, Light, Love, Christian Symbolism, orb, cupola mundi, copula mundi
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, June 2022, Vol. 12, No. 6, 545-588
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