should imagine the situation. When she was a young mother, she was
proud to take care of her child. And now on this great day she is
equally proud to let him take care of her. As he clung to her, his
mother, so she now clings to him, the Judge.

Looking at the composition of the picture, we see that her figure
completes a pyramid, whose apex is the uplifted hand of the Judge,
and whose base lies along the cloud supporting his feet and hers. This
gives proper stability to the figures which dominate the whole great
picture. Considered in a larger way, the pyramid is itself the upper
part of a long oval which keeps the central group apart from the
surrounding host.

The picture of the Last Judgment was painted by Michelangelo on the
end wall of the Sistine Chapel, over the altar, nearly twenty years
after the completion of the ceiling frescoes. There is a great
difference between the two works. The figures on the ceiling are
strong and powerful, their attitudes spirited and graceful. Those in
the Last Judgment are huge and cumbersome, their attitudes strained
and violent. The entire effect of the vast company of colossal figures
is awe-inspiring, but not pleasing.

It is a relief to fix our eyes upon the central portion. Here the
painter expressed an idea at once noble and original. The figure of
the Christ has not the delicate beauty of the dead Christ in the
Pietà, or the finished elegance of the Christ Triumphant, but he has
the splendid vigor of a forceful character. The Mother, less grand and
noble than in the bereavement of the Pietà, less proud than in her
young motherhood, is a gentle and lovely creature. Thus the intensely
masculine is completed by the delicately feminine, and the artist