65Fr Last Judgment

The drawing represents the only study of the overall view of the first planning phase of the Sistina’s Last Judgment. The relevance of the sheet is provided above all by the presence of the fifteenth-century frame, in the lower center, that had to frame the Perugino’s Assumption of the Virgin, and by the space left blank at the top, in which should stay the two lunettes with the Ancestors of Christ that Michelangelo himself had carried out at the time of the decoration of the vault. The presence of such details allows to understand that in the first phase Michelangelo intended to mantain the two previous paintings and that only after it was decided to sacrifice them.