Christian antiquity-today· Resurrection, judgment, salvation and damnation

The Last Judgment orders the destiny of humanity around Christ the judge: raised dead, angels, elect and damned compose a total vision of the end times.

The theme of the Last Judgment is based on several biblical texts, including the Gospel according to Matthew, the Apocalypse and the letters of Paul. At the end of time, Christ returns in glory, the dead rise again and everyone is judged. Christian art gives this doctrine an immediately readable organization. Christ generally dominates the central axis, surrounded by the Virgin, Saint John, the apostles or the saints. The angels sound the trumpet and sometimes present the instruments of the Passion. Below, the tombs open. The elect ascend to paradise while the damned are led to hell. This right-left separation structures Romanesque portals, mosaics, frescoes, altarpieces and triptychs. In the Middle Ages, monsters, scales and tortures made judgment concrete for the faithful. Jan van Eyck concentrates Crucifixion and Judgment in a narrow diptych where the precision of the figures reinforces theological density. Bosch multiplies infernal inventions and transforms the condemned world into a landscape of disorder. Michelangelo then upsets tradition on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, painted between 1536 and 1541. Around a powerful Christ, the bodies form a vast rotating movement without stable architectural frames. Rubens then disrupts tradition on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, painted between 1536 and 1541. Around a powerful Christ, the bodies form a vast rotating movement without stable architectural frames. Rubens then disrupts tradition on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, painted between 1536 and 1541. Around a powerful Christ, the bodies form a vast rotating movement without stable architectural frames. Rubens then disrupts tradition on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel, painted between 1536 and 1541. Around a powerful Christ, the bodies form continue. Petrus Christus, on the contrary, places the Judgment in a whole associating the Annunciation and the Nativity, linking the beginning of the Incarnation and final accomplishment. Each version thus balances justice and mercy, fear and hope, doctrinal order and pictorial invention. The "Last Judgment" selection notably compares the Last Judgment and the Last Judgment, the Annunciation and the Nativity. Its reading favors space.

The Last Judgment requires showing the invisible on the scale of all humanity: the painter must organize chaos without weakening his terror.