JUDGMENT

Michelangelo

Sistine Chapel

The Last Judgment

William Blake

Petworth House

A Vision of the Last Judgment

Kathleen Raine in her book, Golgonooza: City of Imagination, focuses on differences in the way that the two artists, Michelangelo and Blake, conceived of the same subject matter. Beginning on Page 144, she describes their perspectives in creating the images of the Last Judgment. She sees them presenting opposing views of  the meaning and purpose of the apocalypse or final resolution of creation. Blake's Christ is a benevolent figure around whom there is a "great circulation of human figures ascending and descending in unbroken flow from the heavens down to the hells, and again rising up to the heavens." Michelangelo's figure of Christ focuses instead on fallen humanity without compassion.

Raine points out that Blake's figures are not historical figures even though we find their stories in the Bible: they are symbolic of the states through which mortal man passes in his journey through life.

Descriptions of the Last Judgment, (E 556)

"on the left 
beneath the falling figure of Cain is Moses casting his tables of
stone into the Deeps. it ought to be understood that the Persons
Moses & Abraham are not here meant but the States Signified by
those Names  the Individuals being representatives or Visions of
those States as they were reveald to Mortal Man in the Series of
Divine Revelations. as they are written in the Bible these
various States I have seen in my Imagination when distant they
appear as One Man but as you approach they appear
Multitudes of Nations.  Abraham hovers above his posterity which
appear as Multitudes of Children ascending from the Earth
surrounded by Stars as it was said As the Stars of Heaven for
Multitude Jacob & his Twelve Sons"

Represented by Blake are archetypes not individuals. In his life's journey a man is passing through archetypal states from which he is released by Jesus the Imagination in order to proceed to the next state. 

Milton Plate 32 [35], (E 132)

"Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States.
States Change: but Individual Identities never change nor cease:
You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can never Die.
Satan & Adam are States" 

Jerusalem, Plate 33 [37],(E 180)

"We live as One Man; for contracting our infinite senses
We behold multitude; or expanding: we behold as one,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ: and he in us, and we in him,        
Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life,
Giving, recieving, and forgiving each others trespasses."

Raine observes that in contrast to Blake's Christ who is the "heart of divine radiance" Michelangelo's Christ is "stern and majestic" and "comes to judge the world in terms of its own attainable perfection."

Jerusalem, Plate 49,(E 199)

"Yet they are blameless & Iniquity must be imputed only           
To the State they are enterd into that they may be deliverd:
Satan is the State of Death, & not a Human existence:
But Luvah is named Satan, because he has enterd that State.
A World where Man is by Nature the enemy of Man
Because the Evil is Created into a State. that Men               
May be deliverd time after time evermore. Amen.
Learn therefore O Sisters to distinguish the Eternal Human
That walks about among the stones of fire in bliss & woe
Alternate! from those States or Worlds in which the Spirit travels:
This is the only means to Forgiveness of Enemies"  

Page 159 Raine sums up her impressions of the works of two artists: "Thus  for Michelangelo the Last Judgment represents the end and downfall of the world, for Blake it represents rather an opening of the eyes of the spirit, an end only of illusion to make way for a vision of eternal reality."