Pieter Jansz. Pourbus

This crowded composition visualizes the end times as imagined in Christian belief, when Jesus, seated here at the upper center, will return to judge the living and the dead. Filled with references to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, which was painted just a decade earlier, this drawing was a final stage in the preparation of a painted panel commissioned by the judges of the city of Bruges. Carefully built up with layers of ink, wash, and chalk, it was produced as a model for patrons to review as they considered what the final painted version should look like.

Pieter Pourbus was the preeminent painter in the city of Bruges in the mid-16th century. He was responsible for integrating Italian style with traditional Netherlandish subject matter. This drawing is a modello for a panel painting depicting the Last Judgment that Pourbus completed in 1551 for the Palace of Justice in Bruges (pictured below). Pourbus borrowed the division of heaven and earth and arrangement of saints from traditional Netherlandish interpretations of the subject. The continuous, swirling movement and dramatically posed, monumental figures, however, are features reflecting Italian versions of the scene, such as Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, which was known across Europe through printed reproductions.