My road trip from Rome to Florence in five apocalyptic artworks

“Hell on earth”. This phrase keeps cropping up in the news. Raging forest fires fuelled by global warming, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s demolition of Gaza. Nature waging war on humans, and the latter two conflicts branded as retribution by power drunk, ideology-driven autocrats playing God and acting with impunity. They have wrought havoc on a biblical scale. And if you’re caught gasping for air in a heaving mass of sweaty tourists in the Vatican Museums’ Sistine Chapel, looking up at Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement (1536-41), it is life imitating art, and/or scripture. The nuclear threat. Will AI wipe out humanity? Today’s bulletins make the fresco even more poignant; we are all, it seems, staring down the barrel of annihilation. We will be judged, sooner rather than later.

Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

This is where my road trip from Rome to Florence in five apocalyptic artworks began. In the grand chapel, my neck cocked, shoulder to shoulder with the horde, admiring the Renaissance masterpiece. In fact, my trip began the night before in the extravagance of Rome’s five-star Casa Monti hotel. Its art-loving owner Alice told me about her favourite work in the Vatican Museums: the statue of Laocoön, a priest of Apollo in the city of Troy, and his sons (found in 1506). I saw it in the Museo Pio-Clementino before entering the chapel. It portrays the trio being killed by two sea serpents for warning the Trojans against taking in the wooden horse left by the Greeks. Their faces, like many of the other statues around the place, are frozen in anguish. Their expressions mirror the damned being dragged to Hell in The Last Judgement. Is there any relief from the fresco’s solemnity (I’d read that the artist possessed a certain jocularity)? Apparently not, according to Michelangelo expert William Wallace, an art history professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “Despite the fact Michelangelo was surprisingly funny and witty, I don’t think there’s much wit and humour in The Last Judgement,” he told me on the phone after my visit. “If we are sensitive viewers and not gelato-craving tourists, then before the fresco we are made painfully aware of our sins…. often people uncomfortably laugh at some of the demons and the tortures being meted out to the sinners. It is the laughter of those who recognise their sins and fear for their salvation (or should…).” I told him one thing that struck me in the Sistine Chapel, aside from the dazzling artwork, was the smell of a thousand people’s breath. “I went up on the scaffold when they were restoring the ceiling and it felt like 50°C up there – the damp, hot odour of 25,000 people,” Wallace said. “The conservators described it as a kind of tornado hitting the fresco every day.”

Orvieto Cathedral

The next stop was the small papal city of Orvieto, perched on a hilltop, one hour and 45 minutes north of Rome by car. The 14th-century Roman Catholic cathedral there holds another Last Judgement fresco, painted by Luca Signorelli. It precedes Michelangelo’s by about 40 years (he’s said to have spent three months in Orvieto studying Signorelli’s fresco before starting on his own day of reckoning). “I am not surprised that Luca’s works were always highly praised by Michelangelo… [he] imitated the steps of Luca, as anyone can see,” the 16th century painter and historian Giorgio Vasari wrote (more on him later). Signorelli’s Hell does not get the recognition it deserves, and viewing it almost alone was a transcendent experience. It is writhing with ill-fated humans contorted in agony as devils, some with green and blue skin and holding weapons, torture them. They are definitely enjoying dishing out the punishment. The scene is a sea of muscular bums, sinewy poses, and pure terror. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I’d rather be banished to Michelangelo’s Hell. No doubt.

The Papal Basilica of St. Francis, Assisi

Assisi was next on the itinerary (one hour 30 minutes northeast). The town was the birthplace of St. Francis and emerges on the horizon like something out of a fairytale. It was evening when I arrived, and after dropping my bags off at the Nun Assisi Relais, another five-star joint (the luxury accommodation was a welcome antidote to the trip’s suffering theme), I walked through Assisi’s labyrinthine streets to the Papal Basilica of St. Francis. I wanted to see Cesare Sermei’s The Last Judgement (1623) fresco but the basilica was closed, so I trudged back up the hill to my hotel and its underground spa retrofitted into Roman ruins. After a deep untroubled sleep, I returned to the basilica the following morning. Sermei’s vision of Hell is more kitsch, more Hollywood, and less haunting than the rest. One scene stuck in my mind; it showed four naked demons, one chained to a wall using another as a chair, while all looked up in agony, or pleasure – it was hard to tell. The scene smacked of a Berlin nightclub. I walked away underwhelmed but soon perked up after walking around St. Francis’ tomb. That was special.

The Basilica of San Francesco, Arezzo

The penultimate stop, Bicci di Lorenzo’s triumphal arch adorned with his Last Judgement fresco in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo (one hour and 50 minutes north), was also an anticlimax. It was hard to make out due to its lofty position and damaged surface. Only vanilla scenes of torture, the most plaguing scene showed a grey, horned demon dragging one damned soul to Hell. A rabble of naked souls could be seen nervously awaiting their judgement on the other side. Di Lorenzo died in 1452, having only completed his The Last Judgement, the Evangelists in the vault, and two Doctors of the Church. The commission was taken over by Piero della Francesca, who completed the chapel’s decoration with the famous fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross.

Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence

Florence was the end point, more specifically, Vasari and Federico Zuccari’s The Last Judgement (1579) fresco on the ceiling of the dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. Vasari started it but died before completing the work, so Zuccari put the icing on the cake on the 4,000 square metres of dome. There’s a wonderful circularity to the fresco; it felt like I could be sucked into the work, which looked like it was slowly spinning, a gentle vortex towards the heavens (wishful thinking). Naked bodies tumble to the fiery pits of Hell on the outer edge, and I noticed one winged demon boss, Zuccari’s Satan, with three heads eating an unfortunate trio of humans. That was the most chilling scene of the entire trip; it made me want to grab the nearest priest and confess my sins or retire to a mountain shack and live the life of a puritan. The crowned Edlers of the Apocalypse (painted by Vasari), all 24 of them perched in the alcoves on the highest rung of the fresco, look down on the judged. Vasari, who was inspired by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, described his work on the dome as “The true Judgement and the true Damnation and Resurrection,” and standing beneath the masterpiece, it’s hard to disagree. For me, it’s the ultimate Last Judgement, and the only one that made me want to be a better Christian before I meet my maker, as was/is their intended effect. There’s no way I’m spending eternity hanging with a three-headed Satan.