He wanted to exhibit the grand style." So says Vasari, and Vasari is partly right.

But we must not fall into the paradox, so perversely maintained by Ruskin in his lecture on Tintoretto and Michelangelo, that the latter was a cold and heartless artist, caring chiefly for the display of technical skill and anatomical science.

Partial and painful as we may find the meaning of the Last Judgment, that meaning has been only too powerfully and personally felt.

The denunciations of the prophets, the woes of the Apocalypse, the invectives of Savonarola, the tragedies of Italian history, the sense of present and indwelling sin, storm through and through it.

Technically, the masterpiece bears signs of fatigue and discontent, in spite of its extraordinary vigour of conception and execution.